Rene QuezadaYou can and should read the Shmoop Summaries of each episode after reading the episode. Understand, and accept that you will not understand…moreYou can and should read the Shmoop Summaries of each episode after reading the episode. Understand, and accept that you will not understand everything, most, or maybe even half of the text on your first reading. The Shmoop summaries are fantastic, concise, and simplify everything into the normal linear narrative style that Joyce worked so hard to avoid and reject. They're written as bullet points. Also read each episode individually, and if you can take a break in between, each episode is written in slightly or even vastly different style which makes the novel more freeform jazz than it does verse-chorus-verse pop song.

Deepak PitaliyaGenius? No doubt about it.Arrogant? Don't know.Difficult to follow SOMETIMES? Surely you are joking, it is difficult to follow most of the times.You…moreGenius? No doubt about it.Arrogant? Don't know.Difficult to follow SOMETIMES? Surely you are joking, it is difficult to follow most of the times.You are enjoying it: Good to hear that.So different? Completely agree with you.(less)

4 stars because it has so many deep literary and classical references that to say one understood the book, is like saying one is very well educated.

3 stars because the words, strung together in a stream-of-consciousness mellifluous, onomatopoeic way, read just beautifully.

2 stars because it was boring as hell. I just couldn't care less about the characters, I just wanted them to get on with whatever they were doing and have Joyce interfere5 stars because it's a work of genius, so everyone says.

4 stars because it has so many deep literary and classical references that to say one understood the book, is like saying one is very well educated.

3 stars because the words, strung together in a stream-of-consciousness mellifluous, onomatopoeic way, read just beautifully.

2 stars because it was boring as hell. I just couldn't care less about the characters, I just wanted them to get on with whatever they were doing and have Joyce interfere in their lives with his references, his poetry, and his mellifluous whathavewehere considerably less.

1 star because I had to give it up. It got wet when I dropped it in the bath and the pages stuck together when I dried it out. Since it wasn't exactly cheap to start with and there wasn't another copy in the island bookshop (mine), I had no choice but to give it up.........Or at least that's my story and I'm sticking to it............Or it would have been if I hadn't had the audio book.

2. Nestor. Difficulty : 0 General mindblowing brilliance : 8 Obscenity : 0 Beauty of language : 7 Stephen is teaching history. He has a crap job as a part time teacher because he doesn't know what to do with his life. i can sympathise with that, I still don't. His pupils are mostly eager and polite so God knows how he'd get on in today's hellhole classrooms. Anyway he gets paid and his boss the pompous old git Deasey gives him a letter about foot and mouth disease to give to somebody else which Stephen couldn't give a flying fish about. He mooches off.

3. Proteus Difficulty : 9 General mindblowing brilliance : 10 Obscenity: 2 (there's some nosepicking and urination) Beauty of language : 10 Now we get emo Steve trudging along the beach on his way to get a few pints down him, and now the Stream of the Consciousness starts up and gushes and torrents all over the place. And it's all stunningly beautiful. If I was a genius this is exactly how I'd think too. This may be my favourite chapter. May Stephen mooch about forever. Mooch on!

4. Calypso. Difficulty : 5 (now we are getting used to the S of C and Bloom's S is so much easier than Stephen's S - although also a great deal less lovely) General mindblowing brilliance : 5 Obscenity : 8 Beauty of language : 3 We jump back to breakfast time and enter the house and mind of Leopold Bloom who's rustling up some breakfast for himself and his dear lady wife. As we are moseying along in Bloom's brain, accompanying him on his trip to the butchers, suddenly out of nowhere we get the c word - and it really isn't anything but a train of thought. Joyce could have included another stray thought. But no. Joyce was completely committed to the truthfulness of his technique and also convinced of his own genius too. Still, it comes as a shock. Later we trip down Bloom's garden to his outside toilet where he has a pleasant bowel movement: "that slight constipation of yesterday quite gone. Hope it's not too big bring on piles again. No, just right." I mean, Jimmy, is this really necessary? But of course, in Ulysses, it is. The obscenity they found in Ulysses was mostly the disgustingness of minute descriptions of ordinary activities. In movies people never ever used to go to the toilet. Now they do it all the time - what was the first toilet scene in a movie? You could write a list of 20 great toilet scenes. (Contributions welcome.) It must be said that Bloom's mind is cram-ful of bits and bobs about his own life which are never explained, you just have to pick them up and piece them together if you can be arsed. But for instance Bloom is trying very hard not to think that Molly will be meeting Blazes Boylan in the afternoon and will probably be going to bed with him. It's one of those he-knows-but-does-she-know-he-knows situations. So, all in all, a very uncomfortable chapter. Oh, since you asked, I just went to my own toilet for the very same Bloomesque purposes - but not being Joyce, I'm not going to tell you anything further. But it was okay! Thanks for asking!

There's a couple of tedious chapters of Ulysses, it must be confessed (aside from the chapter that's deliberately boring!) and this is one. Bloom is off on his rambling day, meets a couple of coves, visits a chemist and then a public bath (this was before the days of houses having bathrooms! Imagine that!). We get a lot of this kind of stuff - (Bloom is at the chemists):

Living all the day among herbs, ointments, disinfectants. All his alabaster lilypots. Mortar and pestle. Aq. Dist. Fol. Laur. Te Virid. Smell almost cure you like the dentist's doorbell. Doctor whack. He ought to physic himself a bit. Electuary or emulsion. The first fellow that picked an herb to cure himself had a bit of pluck. Simples. Want to be careful. Enough stuff here to chloroform you. Test: turns blue litmus paper red. Chloroform. Overdose of laudanum. Sleeping draughts. Lovephiltres. Paragoric poppysyrup bad for cough. Clogs the pores or the phlegm. Poisons the only cures. Remedy where you least expect it. Clever of nature.

I might have to agree with critics of Ulysses here - I don't need every scrap of word association and mental flotsam that swishes through Bloom's bumbling brain. But Joyce thinks I do!

The obscenity in this chapter is here:

Time to get a bath round the corner. Hammam. Turkish. Massage. Dirt gets rolled up in your navel. Nicer if a nice girl did it. Also I think I. Yes I. Do it in the bath. Curious longing I. Water to water. Combine business with pleasure.

and here (he's in the bath now)

[Bloom:] saw the dark tangled curls of his bush floating, floating hair of the stream around the limp father of thousands, a languid floating flower.

Another chapter I'm not a fan of because we're stuck mostly inside the brain of Bloom who's full of Readers Digest tips and quips and boring "I wonder if" and Molly this and Milly that. The Homeric parallels : yes, well, he goes to a funeral and thinks about death and rotting and such, so that's Hades. Helen's friend Eleanor is living with us at the moment and she CLAIMED to have read Ulysses as part of a course on epics but when pressed admitted that she had SKIMMED it and didn't like it much to which I said "Skimmed? SKIMMED? You can't skim the greatest modernist work of literature in English! Faugh! Crivens! Help ma Bob! I think I'm coming down with the apoplexy so I am!" Even the tedious chapters, of which this is one, have to be read word by word, line by line.

* the only trace of rudeness I could find in hades was this - Bloom is thinking about precisely when his son (deceased) was conceived: "Must have been that morning in Raymond terrace she was at the window watching the two dogs at it by the wall... Give us a touch, Poldy. God, I'm dying for it. How life begins." To readers of 2010 it all seems somewhat coarse, yes, but to readers of the 1920s these stray remarks were incendiary. However I would like to complain about this otherwise handsome Modern Library hardback edition I'm reading. This is one of the two available hardbacks of Ulysses and it comes wreathed with introductions, blurbs and reprints of judicial decisions all of which are entirely to do with the alleged obscenity of the book. Hence I thought I would reread it partly with that in mind. But really, who cares any more about that? Get rid of all this stuff. Let's have an introduction all about the crackle and the pity and the joy and fire of this bizarre book.

I have read Ulysses at least three or four times (and once with Gilbert Stuart's authorised translation) and always found unsounded depths that I had not suspected. Every chapter introduces new narrative techniques, new perspectives and characters, and new voices. This is a book that definitely requires some homework to fully appreciate. I would recommend the aforementioned Gilbert Stuart commentary and biography, the Frank Budgen criticism, and especially the classic Richard Ellman biography. TI have read Ulysses at least three or four times (and once with Gilbert Stuart's authorised translation) and always found unsounded depths that I had not suspected. Every chapter introduces new narrative techniques, new perspectives and characters, and new voices. This is a book that definitely requires some homework to fully appreciate. I would recommend the aforementioned Gilbert Stuart commentary and biography, the Frank Budgen criticism, and especially the classic Richard Ellman biography. There is precious little here not to love regardless of your literary tastes, but like most good things, this book asks you to work for it. As Leopold Bloom goes through this day in Dublin, all kinds of things are happening all around him and it is a virtual reality experience in four dimensions - ending with for me one of the most beautiful chapters ever written, the stream of conscious dialog of Bloom's wife posing as Ulysses' Penelope. It is of such texture and voluptuousness that it is impossible to capture without first hand experience of having read it. If you put forward one personal challenge for a great 2017 read, make it Ulysses!

I was recently in Dublin and spent a good 30 cold minutes with a strong wind on the turret where Buck Mulligan has his shave in Chapter 1 - amazing! I cannot even begin to express how this book moves me. When I get the classic GR question when friending "what is your favorite book and why?", I always answer "Ulysses, because I learn more about myself everytime I read it!"...more

Sometimes reading a Great Work of Literature is like drinking fine French wine, say an aged Burgundy or Mersault. Everyone tells you how amazing it is, and on an intellectual level you can appreciate the brilliance, the subtlety, the refinement. But really it is too refined. It is unapproachable, it is aloof, it doesn't go with thatketchupy burger you're having for dinner. You're not enjoying it.

But then you read the label more closely and realize that although it tastes just like a fine burgundSometimes reading a Great Work of Literature is like drinking fine French wine, say an aged Burgundy or Mersault. Everyone tells you how amazing it is, and on an intellectual level you can appreciate the brilliance, the subtlety, the refinement. But really it is too refined. It is unapproachable, it is aloof, it doesn't go with thatketchupy burger you're having for dinner. You're not enjoying it.

But then you read the label more closely and realize that although it tastes just like a fine burgundy your wine was made in the Abarca Hills of Chile. It is from Casa Marin and was in fact not made by a snooty Frenchman with a degree in oenology but by a down-to-earth woman farmer, and although it is sophisticated and complex there is a more accessible note, a friendliness... And perhaps more importantly, it is several percent higher in alcohol than that French wine youthought you had, and by the time you're halfway through the bottle it really seems pretty likeable after all, you and the wine are getting along just fine and you are having an enthusiastic discussion ofliterature with people who were strangers an hour ago, and one of them tells a dirty joke that Joyce would have sniggered at, and you laugh so hard you spill your wine on him, and maybe he's a little annoyedbut your host brings a towel and another bottle and the party isgreat. And maybe you are a wine ignoramus and the fancy bottle was kind of wasted on you, but you enjoyed it, so -- so what?...more

Often considered one of the ‘greatest novel of the 20th century’, James Joyce’s masterpiece, Ulysses, is both a feat and feast of sheer literary brilliance. Reimagining Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey as the travels and trials of an everyday man through the crowded streets and pubs of Dublin, Joyce weaves strikingly versatile prose styles and varying perspectives to encompass the whole of life within the hours of a single standard day, June 16th, 1904. This day, dubbed Bloomsday, is celebrated witOften considered one of the ‘greatest novel of the 20th century’, James Joyce’s masterpiece, Ulysses, is both a feat and feast of sheer literary brilliance. Reimagining Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey as the travels and trials of an everyday man through the crowded streets and pubs of Dublin, Joyce weaves strikingly versatile prose styles and varying perspectives to encompass the whole of life within the hours of a single standard day, June 16th, 1904. This day, dubbed Bloomsday, is celebrated with increasing popularity in modern times, which is a testament to the lasting greatness of the novel (and to the desire to drink and be merry of all people). Instead of taking a daily life and elevating it to mythical proportions, Joyce has taken mythology and reversed it, shrinking it into an average day, which in turn gives each character and action a heroic sense about them. In this way, even besting a drunken nationalist spewing anti-sematic sentiments at a bar can be seen as a legendary conquest. Ulysses is an epic in its own right, setting the bar for literature up to the stratosphere as we immerse ourselves in Joyce’s dear dirty Dublin.

While one must have their wits about them to navigate this laborious labyrinth of literature, the task is highly rewarding. It is very understandable that so many people do not finish this novel, or just plain dislike it; this book can be downright frustrating. Combining the heavy use of cryptic and dated allusions, obfuscating narration, an enviable vocabulary and pages of dense prose to decipher, Joyce intentionally set out to create a literary odyssey of words to conquer saying ‘I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that’s the only way of ensuring one’s immortality.’ Readers should be warned this is a tough novel. Often times this novel inspired such frustration that it was tempting to slam the cover for good, and it wasn’t until the second half that I was finally able to recognize that this novel had written its way into my heart. Upon reflecting back after completion, only then did I realize that this truly is one of the greatest books ever written and I have come to love it. Perhaps this is akin to the feeling those who run marathons or climb mountains feel; the adventure is a long, arduous struggle where one must keep focus and positive to battle through, yet the pride and elation of completion more than makes up for the struggles. I do not wish to make this book seem like it is only for masochists though, as there are more than enough rewards to reap along the way. This is some of the finest displays of writing I have ever encountered, and offers a broad range of style. Many people fail to mention that this book is downright funny as well. There are countless little jokes, such as characters running from a bar so they can fart loudly unheard, endless sexual jokes and quips, and many funny characterizations. It should be noted as well that there is no shame in seeking aide for this book. Originally I didn’t want to, but there are so many esoteric allusions and puzzles that an annotation guide and a few essays really helped my understanding. This is a novel to teach to yourself, not just read – there are people who spent years at universities digging through this book and it is still widely debated. Even the great Ulysses (or Odysseus depending on who your asking) had to seek aide in his epic journey.

The variety of style in this book is highly impressive. Each of the 18 chapters, aside from being thematically built around a corresponding episode of The Odyssey, has its own unique set of techniques and lexicon, often parodying the styles of newspapers or current women’s magazines, traditional Irish mythological styles, a chapter dissolving the world into scientific properties, the famous stream-of-consciousness, 200 pages of jocular hallucinations in play format, and a dizzying array of prose from flowery language to the language of flowers. Joyce had such a love of style that there is even an entire chapter devoted to alternating writing styles as he parodies many famous authors throughout history (calling all fans of David Mitchell or If on a winter's night a traveler) in a swirling scene of drunken debates. The language is often quite playful, lyrical and full of puns. He even uses sentence structure to convey motion, such as Gerty’s limp: ‘Tight boots? No. She’s lame! O!’. If just for the use of language alone, this is one of the most spectacular books ever written and practically killed my dictionary. Also, it is interesting that C.G. Jung diagnosed Joyce as having schizophrenia based on reading this book due to the rapidly changing styles and the use of playful rhyming and jangling speech. Joyce's daughter did in fact have schizophrenia.

One of Ulysses most discussed features is Joyce's technique of placing the reader within the minds of the characters. It is not a typical first person narration, however, as the characters are seemingly unaffected and unaware they have a reader riding along in their thoughts. Information comes across in broken and random spurts, and Joyce does not bother with clarifying these thoughts to the reader. Much like William Faulkner, Joyce leaves the reader unaided to piece together his massive puzzle. Often the subject of a thought can switch between several people without any indication, as with Boylan and Bloom in Molly’s soliloquy, and many chapters take pages to realize who the person speaking is. While initially following Stephen and then Bloom second by second through their routine, the novel soon fractures into smaller chunks of concurrent narration, to further fit all of life within the day and to offer a broader, more varied perspective on the events that transpire. The idea of the ‘parallax’, which is essentially a scientific term that different perspectives will have a uniquely different view of the same object, is often on Bloom’s mind, and is a major theme running through this novel. Through the multiple points of view, the reader is flooded with alternative, and often conflicting, images of the characters. The readers must then decide themselves what is the whole picture.

The various speakers are another testament to the versatility of the pen employed by Joyce. Each speaker has a drastically different tone and vocabulary, as well as structure (most notably Molly). There are times when the reader may wonder if Joyce’s opinions on the Jewish people and women may be rather negative, but then he will surprise you with a completely opposing statement. Women, and sexuality in general, are a major topic in this novel, and it is no surprise many have dismissed Joyce as a misogynist as many of the women in this novel are viewed strictly in regards to their sexuality. There are many female roles who are only used to further this idea, often by having many characters be prostitues. Through Bloom we see an unapologetic image of women as a sexual objects, and a male opinion on how women view sexuality. However, with Molly, Joyce offers a highly contrasted opinion on how women view their own sexuality, how women view men’s sexuality, and even how women view how men view women’s sexuality. Molly even fantasizes about having a penis and what it would be like to mount a woman. So while some ideas may be offensive to a reader, they must view it with an open mind and in the context of the novel and characters. Also, Joyce was aware of the overzealous censorship of novels in England and America and often wrote passages that blew past the lines intentionally to irk these censors. No wonder the novel was banned in American until 1934 when the Supreme Court over-turned the ruling in a landmark obscenity trial.

Shakespeare’s Hamlet plays just as much of a role in this novel as the Odyssey. This further emphasizes the parallax, and Joyce’s goal to keep the life of his characters grounded in reality by not aligning any of the characters in a clear cut way. Hamlet is often discussed amongst the intelligentsia of Dublin, and a critical scene involves Stephen’s interpretation of the play revealing many themes of the novel at hand. From the ideas of Stephen’s role as Telemachus searching for a surrogate father in Bloom’s Ulysses as well as the ongoing thoughts over adultery all reveal themselves early on through Stephen’s lecture on Hamlet. However, this scene also demonstrates that Stephen is a Hamlet figure as well as Bloom being a figure of the deceased King, and that Molly may also fit the role of the betraying Queen as well as Penelope. There are many other roles in this novel that have more than one character that could fill them, such as how both Buck Mulligan and Blazes Boylan are both ‘usurpers’. It is interesting to note here that many of the characters, Mulligan in particular, are based from people Joyce interacted with in real life. ‘The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring.’, is said at a timely manner when Stephen explores how the characters of Hamlet all correspond to Shakespeare’s own family, much like how these characters correspond to those around Bloom and to those that were surrounding Joyce. Stephen is also highly representative of Joyce himself. He was the hero of Joyce’s semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and in this novel we see him continue his quest of artistry. He even sides with an unborn child in a debate over whether a mother or child’s life is more important during birth, signifying his ideas that art, something we create, is of the utmost importance. A touch of metafiction as well as a compounding use of themes is one of the many ways this book stole my heart.

Joyce avoids distinct lines anywhere he can with this novel. Characters such as Bloom are walking contradictions and a paradox to those around him. He is Jewish, but also baptized. He is a father figure, but also displays many motherly traits and desires causing the more masculine characters to harbor a bit of disdain for him for being rather ‘womanly’. He is very caring and generous, but then at times very cheap and critical of others for their generosity. Such is the enigma of Leopold Bloom, one of the most likeable everyman characters in all of literature (it was very difficult not to picture him as George Clooney from O Brother, Where Art Thou?, another wonderful retelling of The Odyssey). He is not without his faults though, as he is a shameless womanizer and has the ‘undressing eyes’ aimed at all the fair ladies of Dublin (and what is with Joyce and men masturbating in public, ie The Encounter from Dubliners? I’m on to you Joyce…). Bloom spends much of this novel on the go, trying to move forward from the sadness of his past and the weight of thoughts of his wife’s possible transgressions. ‘Think you’re escaping and run into yourself,’ Bloom mentions. His ‘coming together’ with Stephen is also grounded in reality, as there is no clear-cut bond between them. ‘Frailty thy name is marriage’ Bloom thinks, playing off of the famous line from Hamlet. The marriage of Bloom and Stephen, Bloom and Molly, and many other ‘marriages’ of characters are fraught with incompatible moments, as people just do not always get along or agree. While the union of Bloom and Stephen is alluded to through the entire novel, they often are at odds with one another or offend the other while trying to be friendly. However, this meeting is highly significant in both their lives, and as many of these ‘marriages’ are flawed, they are shown as having shaped each individual. As C.G. Jung once wrote, ‘The meeting of two personalities is like the contact between two chemical substances. If there is any reaction, both are transformed.’

Ulysses is not an easy novel by any means, but it is well worth the effort. The prose may be daunting at first, but patients, and a bit of guidance can really go a long way and this novel will eventually bloom for any reader so they can drink the sweet language of Joyce’s pen. There are so many wonderful techniques buzzing about and puzzles to unlock. Plus, this novel is outright hilarious. For one of the more comprehensive reviews you can find, you should also read Ian's stunning review. Joyce has certainly left his mark on the face of literature with this novel, which is more than deserving of the title bestowed on it by the Modern Library of the greatest novel of the 20th century. Yes it is the greatest and yes you should read it and yes each word will blossom in your mind and Yes will I give this book a 5/5 and yes I said yes I will Yes.5/5

In a man’s single day are all the daysof time from that unimaginablefirst day, when a terrible God marked outthe days and agonies, to that other,when the ubiquitous flow of earthlytime goes back to its source, Eternity,and flickers out in the present, the past,and the future—what now belongs to me.Between dawn and dark lies the historyof the world. From the vault of night I seeat my feet the wanderings of the Jew,Carthage put to the sword, Heaven and Hell.Grant me, O Lord, the courage and the joyto ascend to the summit of this day....more

I have left this book unrated because I simply cannot rate it. I cannot review it either or try to criticise it. Instead, I’ve decided to share my experience with something I cannot define.

But first, here’s what James Joyce had to say about it:

'I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that’s the only way of insuring one’s immortality.’

The accuracy of this statement balances out the sheer arrogance of Joyce’s asI have left this book unrated because I simply cannot rate it. I cannot review it either or try to criticise it. Instead, I’ve decided to share my experience with something I cannot define.

But first, here’s what James Joyce had to say about it:

'I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that’s the only way of insuring one’s immortality.’

The accuracy of this statement balances out the sheer arrogance of Joyce’s assertion.

I tried to put my own design on the book. Well, at least, I tried to focus on one particular recurring theme as I read in order to try and bring the thing together in my own mind. I failed. I focused on Death, or at least, discussions of Death and the representations of it. But after a while the ideas started to contradict each other and fade out of the narrative only to randomly pop up again and vanish.

Here’s three quotes I pulled out from the beginning though:

“Old England is dying…….”

“And what is death she asked…..”

“In a dream she had come to him after death…..”

Death, and its shadow, seemed to haunt the early part of the writing. What is this end we are pushing towards? Is it an end? Can we even call it painful? The idea it conveys is that time, at least time according to human perception, pushes singularly towards this phenomenon: the ultimate truth of life. Ulysses is deeply symbolic. This haunting can be read as a decay of the state, the breakdown of society (its traditions and values) as it enters a new modern era. The old structures of civilisation are dying, the world is changing, art is changing, thought is changing and perhaps this is what Ulysses represents in some sense. Perhaps this new creature of literature is the very essence of this new dawn, of the modernist art movement, or perhaps I have simply been swayed by one of the many nuanced impressions within the work, the subtle hints and suggestions that can be ready in so many different ways.

I focused so much on death that when it left the narrative I did not know what else to look for or why I was reading it or where the story was going. This book is not something that fits into a nice little box or one that can be summed up accurately: it simply is a thing that is. Forming a coherent opinion of something so incoherent is even harder. What can one judge? The sheer brilliance of the innovative writing is juxtaposed against the dull drawn out interactions and descriptions. Isn’t that sentence just one huge contradiction? Well, the entire book is one contradiction. I could spend a lifetime studying Ulysses and still not be able to decipher it.

I hate it.

I love it.

I want to burn it.

I want to celebrate it.

Certainly, I enjoyed reading parts of Ulysses, in fact, I engulfed parts of it. However, I detested just as many bits of it. I was so terribly bored with large parts of the novel, frustrated, agonised and, on one occasion, actually sent to sleep. You could imagine my dismay when I woke up the next morning with the thing on the floor and I’d lost my page number. I had no idea where I was exactly, somewhere between pages 300- 500 I guessed rather inaccurately, so I had to try and back track. Much harder than it sounds. I lost my place in a book that I was already lost in completely. Not lost as engrossed, but lost in the sense that I had no idea where the hell I was in this labyrinth of writing and that’s before I lost my page. Now there’s some irony.

The result was me reading around seventy pages a second time round with next to no memory I had actually read them until I came across a rather distinctive passage and was rather annoyed with myself. Ulysses is a book that washes over you; it’s the sort of book that you can spend reading for a few hours and then barely remember what you have read. It requires a reader who can pay attention to a book that has a wavering plot, likes to wonder all over the place, and then return randomly to characters that have disappeared for a long period of time. All in all, it was my nightmare and my dream.

It defeated me twice. I kept forgetting what had happened, and despite reading so many plot summaries, I probably could not describe this book beyond what the blurb on my copy says. I feel like I need to read it again. The thought fills with me dread. Perhaps one day when I am old, surrounded by thousands of books and an army of loyal cats, I will pick up this book again and remember my initial desondency and admiration. Or perhaps I will be wiser. Perhaps I will see to the heart of the matter and hate/love Joyce even more for this, for this thing. As a random aside, I feel sorry for whatever kooky old professor in Fahrenheit 451 drew the bad straw and had to remember this book. I digress, but imagine that. Poor bastard.

I had to start the book again three times, and I found myself agonising over sections of inane and irrelevant bollocks. But there’s also beauty inside, just like life. How sentimental of me. Ulysses is modernism. Modernist literature varied, though a sense of newness permeated all artistic representations. And this was, and still is, something new.

Good books should participate in a "conversation" with each other, and with us when we read them. I made the mistake of inviting Joyce - via Ulysses - to join my literary conversation. He's not much of a conversationalist. He mostly just sat in a corner mumbling incoherently to himself. Every once in a while he'd quote - or try to ridicule - something he'd read somewhere, but that's not really conversation is it? More like namedropping.

Buried within Joyce's verbosity is something similar to a plGood books should participate in a "conversation" with each other, and with us when we read them. I made the mistake of inviting Joyce - via Ulysses - to join my literary conversation. He's not much of a conversationalist. He mostly just sat in a corner mumbling incoherently to himself. Every once in a while he'd quote - or try to ridicule - something he'd read somewhere, but that's not really conversation is it? More like namedropping.

Buried within Joyce's verbosity is something similar to a plot related to a day in the life of Leopold Bloom, husband of Molly, father of Milly - away at photography school - and Rudy - namesake of Poldy's father - who's death at eleven days of age strained the marriage beyond recovery but left the sexual obsessions of Poldy and Molly intact leading to scenes such as Leopold masturbating on the beach while flirting at a distance with Gerty MacDowell or Molly masturbating as she daydreams about past, current, and future lovers including Stephen Dedalus who is seen by both Leopold and Molly as a substitute for poor Rudy - albeit in very different ways. How about that? I can write at least as well as James Joyce.

Reading Ulysses is something akin to reading a very long list of spelling words...many of them without spaces between them. I've come to the conclusion that stream of consciousness writing comes in two forms. In one form, authors such as Thomas Pynchon and Virginia Woolf employ real - albeit often strange - sentences to portray the thought processes of their characters. The second form - epitomized by James Joyce and William Faulkner - involves the mere stringing together of unrelated words perhaps with the intention of revealing the depth of the psychosis of their characters. I much prefer the former method....more

as a bloke with an english degree, i guess i'm supposed to extol all thing joycian and gladly turn myself self over to the church of joye. after all, that's what english grads do, right? we revel in our snobbery and gloat about having read 'gravity's rainbow' and 'ulysses' start to finish.

well, i may be in the minority when i say i didn't care for this book at all. i get that it's a complex book with innumerable references to greek mythology, heavy allegories, dense poetry wacky structures, andas a bloke with an english degree, i guess i'm supposed to extol all thing joycian and gladly turn myself self over to the church of joye. after all, that's what english grads do, right? we revel in our snobbery and gloat about having read 'gravity's rainbow' and 'ulysses' start to finish.

well, i may be in the minority when i say i didn't care for this book at all. i get that it's a complex book with innumerable references to greek mythology, heavy allegories, dense poetry wacky structures, and to some serves as a sort of mental masturbation. however, i think it's also pretty unreadable. maybe i'm old-fashioned, but i think books should be accessible and readable. it's something john steinbeck understood all too well. he most definitely wrote for the masses and the 'every man,' and it shows in his work. i prefer books that use simple language to expound on profound truths, not necessarily a book that requires me to constanty refer to other sources to help me understand what i've just read. this, of course, is just my opinion and should be taken as nothing more.

i'm hesitant to say that anyone who gives this book 'five stars' does so because 'ulysses' carries such a cachet amongt the academic elite and intelligentsia, but i think most of them probably do. sure, that's unfair, but i'm really kind of wondering how anyone ever finished it. it's a bit of bore, linguistical acrobatics or not.

if you do decide to read it, definitely get a copy with judge john m. woolsey's treatise on lifting the ban on 'ulysses.' it's a remarkable piece of writing and display's the judges thoughtfulness, eloquence, and fair-mindedness. it's the standard by which all judicial opinions should be judged [no pun intended!].

maybe you'll read 'ulysses,' maybe you won't. if you do and you don't care for it, that's ok. being a great reader doesn't mean you two the critical line....more

The singer asked the crowd - "how many of your have read James Joyce?"

He had just sang Whiskey in the Jar and was queuing up to sing Finnegan's Wake, he was setting the stage for his next song. A few hands went up, mine among them. We were in The Merry Ploughman's Pub in South Dublin and the crowd was having a good time, singing and drinking Guiness from pint glasses.

"Now, how many understood what you read?" The crowd laughed and half as many hands stayed up and I realized my extended arm waveThe singer asked the crowd - "how many of your have read James Joyce?"

He had just sang Whiskey in the Jar and was queuing up to sing Finnegan's Wake, he was setting the stage for his next song. A few hands went up, mine among them. We were in The Merry Ploughman's Pub in South Dublin and the crowd was having a good time, singing and drinking Guiness from pint glasses.

"Now, how many understood what you read?" The crowd laughed and half as many hands stayed up and I realized my extended arm wavered some too.

I have looked at Ulysses over the years like it was a high and formidable mountain to climb. I have picked it up several times over the years, weighed it, set it beside the phone book and compared width. I have scanned the pages and noticed with alarm a painful lack of punctuation, and not the Cormac McCarthy kind of simplicity; but run on sentences, stream of consciousness. I have avoided the The Sound and the Fury for the same reason, finally giving up on that. Mailer’s Why Are We in Vietnam? was a morass of nonsense that I slogged through to the end, but it was a relatively short book.

And then there is the length. Formidable. I read through War and Peace, in awe of its epic stature, and I finished Atlas Shrugged out of sheer inertia and also out of a morbid curiosity to see it through. Ulysses was long and in stream of consciousness prose.

And so the years went by and I could not bring myself to begin the climb, did not feel up to sloshing through the swamp of adjectives and relentless narration.

When I did finally begin, I was pleasantly surprised.

The stream of consciousness technique was not overwhelming, was not the nonsensical morass of Mailer nor the cacophony of thought from Faulkner. Joyce’s language is rich and engaging, his storytelling modern and experimental but still approachable. There were moments that I was in love with the book, believing this was the greatest novel I had ever read, I was convinced of Joyce’s brilliance and inspired by his genius. It is funny, profane, irreverent, even shocking. The references to classic literature, especially the parallels with Homer makes it worthy of a greater review than I can come up with. Molly Bloom's lengthy soliloquy at the end is a gem of vulgarity and human observation. Other times I was simply reading to get through, keeping a runner’s pace through the long back miles and steep hills of a marathon.

Ultimately, this is a masterpiece, a great work in the English language or of any language, literature of the highest order. But it can be difficult, in its length and its narration, and Joyce asks a lot of his reader, his prose is steeped in his own erudition and he makes little attempt to step it down. But for the reader who makes it to the top, it is a great view from the summit.

This review is my attempt to reclaim Ulysses from the academics. My edition was a simple paperback without notes or glossary but containing a preface which I intend to read after I've written my review. I'll probably look at other reviews too, as frankly, I'm suffering withdrawal symptoms from the world of this novel.

The word 'novel' seems inappropriate to describe Ulysses but at the same time, the word might have been invented specifically to describe it. Everything abouReviewed in August 2012

This review is my attempt to reclaim Ulysses from the academics. My edition was a simple paperback without notes or glossary but containing a preface which I intend to read after I've written my review. I'll probably look at other reviews too, as frankly, I'm suffering withdrawal symptoms from the world of this novel.

The word 'novel' seems inappropriate to describe Ulysses but at the same time, the word might have been invented specifically to describe it. Everything about it is novel, from the structure to the use of language, from the characterisation to the treatment of history. But by ‘novel’, I don’t mean experimental in an obscure or inaccessible way, as its reputation seems to imply: I found Flan O’Brian’s At Swim Two Birds quite difficult to follow in a way that Ulysses is definitely not and I’m finding Beckett’s Molloy, which I’m currently reading, much more difficult to get involved with; Ulysses was pure pleasure in comparison.

So why has this book developed such a fearsome reputation? Perhaps because we mistakenly think that to understand it, we need to have a thorough knowledge of the classics, including Shakespeare and Homer. The fact that I know very little about the Odyssey except that it recounts a long journey home made by Odysseus/Ulysses didn’t take from my enjoyment in the least. I’m not an expert on Hamlet either, but the little I know, and which most people probably know, was sufficient to allow me to follow the sections which refer to it. There are a few Old English phrases near the beginning that I googled but I soon decided to just let myself sink into the world of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus without further interruption. Being able to read this without disruption is probably part of the reason I enjoyed the experience so much. When I bought my copy some fifteen years ago, I read about a third of it with great pleasure but as I had young children at the time and limited free moments, I had to give up when the reading experience became more challenging. And yes, it does become challenging in some parts, but never for very long, as if Joyce knew exactly how far he could try our patience. As to deciphering those challenging sections, I think that one reader’s guess is as good as another’s. A big part of the pleasure for me was the puzzle element because I had plenty of time to reflect on what I was reading, time to figure out a meaning that satisfied me and also made sense of the bigger picture. And that’s what my reading without notes proved to me: there is a perfectly logical trajectory behind it all, even behind the more phantasmagorical elements. During the course of one day, Joyce reveals more and more facets of his main character, Leopold Bloom, and of the world he lived in. The characterisation of Bloom is so well done that by the end, he represents everyman, and every woman too, as well as messiahs and prophets, kings and emperors, in short all of humanity, complete with all of its goodness, and yes, some of its failings. Of course, my interpretation may not be accurate and there may be acres of symbolism that I missed, but since I had such a satisfying read, how can that matter? My satisfaction may have depended to some extent on the fact that I have an Irish background, but to what degree it helped me, I cannot tell. It is true that some of the material was familiar from history lessons and from general culture but at the same time, the Dublin of 1904 was a complete revelation to me. And the themes covered move quickly from the local to the universal so that a lack of knowledge of Irish life and culture shouldn’t be an impossible barrier, just a challenging one. If you prefer exciting, stimulating, rewarding reading experiences, Ulysses is definitely for you....more

NOTES:1. Reading this so late, so long after its lessons have been absorbed and modified and abandoned and resurrected (see Will Self's Umbrella), I can't imagine what it was like for a first-time reader in 1922-23. For those who both loved and hated it, it must have been a hydrogen bomb of a book. The classicists must have been fit for tying. The hubris of rewriting Homer. The classicists must have been apoplectic!

2. In the Hades/Graveyard section (6), Leopold Bloom considers the enormity of deNOTES:1. Reading this so late, so long after its lessons have been absorbed and modified and abandoned and resurrected (see Will Self's Umbrella), I can't imagine what it was like for a first-time reader in 1922-23. For those who both loved and hated it, it must have been a hydrogen bomb of a book. The classicists must have been fit for tying. The hubris of rewriting Homer. The classicists must have been apoplectic!

2. In the Hades/Graveyard section (6), Leopold Bloom considers the enormity of death at Dignam's graveside: "Must be 20 or 30 funerals every day [here]. Then Mount Jerome for the Protestants. Funerals all over the world everywhere every minute. Shoveling them under by the cartload doublequick. Thousands every hour. Too many in the world." And later: "Plant him and have done with him. Like down a coalshoot."

3. I suppose what dazzles me most is that this Novel can be so thoroughly packed with subtext, yet remain so readable. Is it the first scalable modern novel? This of course almost guarantees ever richer subsequent readings.

4. Father Conmee. What a great name. Too funny. Not sure if this is a pattern yet, but so far Joyce seems to alternate chapters of rich allusion (Stephen Dedalus and others discussing Hamlet at National Library in the Scylla and Charibdis chapter) with chapters of pretty straightforward action (Conmee, Bloom's peripatetic progress). There's conflation, too, of Odysseus ten-year ordeal at sea with Leopold Bloom as Wandering Jew.

5. The Wandering Rocks chapter is Ulysses's center where Joyce parades virtually his entire cast past the reader as the Governor makes what smacks as a triumphal progress through Dublin. This reminds me very much of Henry Fielding's The History of Tom Jones: A Foundling, when all the players cross paths at the inn in the book's middle. Perhaps Fielding was also using a Homeric model?

6. It's hard to endure the jeering layabouts (Lenehan, Dedalus pere, Dollard, etc.) as they make fun of Bloom's misfortune. Bloom who, suffering in silence, we come to like more and more. Also, cross-cutting, filmic. Yet we read (mostly) with assurance. Sure of our way. Again, I can't imagine what the first readers felt. Unlike us they had no precedent.

7. Joyce's penchant for puns annoys. Actually, I'm beginning to hate it. Funny, almost everything else I'm fine with: the purposeful rhymes; the interlarded alternately speculative, abject, or ebullient etc consciousnesses; the rich allusiveness and multiple languages; the use of meaningless, infantile sounds, almost a babble (or perhaps Babel). Yet the puns strike me as sophomoric, someone playing saw amidst the philharmonic. Harsh dissonance. I suppose dissonance is sometimes useful. Penderecki springs to mind, and Coltrane, though these may be extreme examples.

8. On another level the book can be read, at least in part, as an indictment of Irish Anti-Semitism. As expressed cogently on p. 484 of my Everyman edition:

And to the solemn court of Green street there came sir Frederick the Falconer. And he sat him there about the hour of five o'clock to administer the law of the brehons at the commission for all that and those parts to be holden in and for the county of the city of Dublin. And there sat with him the high sinhedrim of the twelve tribes of Iar, for every tribe one man, of the tribe of Patrick and of the tribe of Hugh and of the tribe of Owen and of the tribe of Conn and of the tribe of Oscar and of the tribe of Fergus and of the tribe of Finn and of the tribe of Dermot and of the tribe of Cormac and of the tribe of Kevin and of the tribe of Caolte and of the tribe of Ossian, there being in all twelve good men and true. And he conjured them by Him who died on rood that they should well and truly try and true deliverance make in the issue joined between their sovereign lord the king and the prisoner at the bar and true verdict give according to the evidence, [etc.]

This passage and others ridicules the bigotry and suggests that we are all of us of one tribe. Not to put too fine a point on it, but much else is given similar treatment in this chapter: blind nationalism, especially, which, at time of publication, had done so much to depopulate Europe of its young men. Come to think of it, aside from the well-known exceptions, there are no teeming displays of young men in the novel as there are displays of old men. On p. 632, supporting this observation, there is a deprecation of the "mutilated soldiers and sailors" of Dublin's streets.

9. In the pure-streaming language section now known as "Oxen of the Sun." If this were Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, this would be the part where Dave has entered the pod and is now speeding through far-flung intergalactic space experiencing a virtuoso display of psychedelic landscapes on the way. Yes, one can see how this would have been completely new in 1922. Then the language turns mock-chivalric/courtly/archaic as Bloom awaits some word on the Purefoy child. (See Erik's excellent comment No. 30 below.) Dixon arrives and so it's hie to the pub where Bloom comes upon a drunken Stephen, and they await Stately, Plump, Buck Mulligan. After long consideration of Mrs. Purefoy's protracted labor, Malachi arrives with the hilarious lament, to wit:

It grieved him plaguily, he said, to see the nuptial couch defrauded of its dearest pledges: and to reflect upon so many agreeable females with rich jointures, a prey to the vilest bonzes, who hide their flambeau under a bushel in an uncongenial cloister or lose their womanly bloom in the embraces of some unaccountable muskin when they might multiply the inlets of happiness, sacrificing the inestimable jewel of their sex when a hundred pretty fellows were at hand to caress, this, he assured them, made his heart weep.

This chapter must include a dozen or so parodies of various narrative styles, each with an almost seamless transition to the next. I can only pick out a handful of them on this first reading. They include the triumphalist battle song, troubadour's ballad, bawdy Rabelaisian tale, ancient Greek drama, epistolary, confessional, gothic, and Restoration Comedy modes, etc.

10. The early going in the hallucinatory Brothel chapter (15) is as funny as anything in the book. I especially like Bloom's mock trial in the street, which might be called "Bloom's Ordeal," for sexual molestation and general rakishness. The style reminds me of Samuel Beckett who, as we know, thought the world of Joyce. Most of the section is wildly madcap and suggests a sheer ecstatic joy in storytelling. But it is long, too. Stephen's Latin has worn thin. I've stopped translating these passages. That can wait for a second reading. I have to admit I'm a trifle mystified by the long sex-reversal hallucination with Bello and Bloom. I thought at first that it might be a proto-feminist tract whose unseemly length hammers home a commentary about the lowly station of early 20th century women, but but then I thought that's too earnest and forthright for Joyce, who was no one's moralist. This was almost immediately contradicted by a passage in the following chapter (16), set in the cabman's shelter, in which the fate of prostitutes is bemoaned at length.

The chapter (15) is a massive, teeming set-piece in which every character in the book makes an appearance, plus many historical figures not seen before: Shakespeare, Edward the Seventh, Lord Tennyson, etc. This was for me the most wearying slog of the entire book. I put it aside and came back four times before I could finish it. Hope your progress is brisker.

11. Skipped pages 948-1005, a thing I abhor doing. I just felt that if I didn't I would never get to Molly's soliloquy....more

Silly little kalliope, the spirally-kalliope, who had thought about entering the Labyrinth in the past but just stood outside looking at its entrance. For years. Luckily for her, the real Kalliope, the Grand, the Muse, springing out of GR where she has been dwelling in the recent past, took pity on her and after visiting the gods of literature and seeking their acceptance, decided to assist the spirally and guide her through the imposing Labyrinth.

As the Grand Kalliope-the-Muse thought that Spir

Silly little kalliope, the spirally-kalliope, who had thought about entering the Labyrinth in the past but just stood outside looking at its entrance. For years. Luckily for her, the real Kalliope, the Grand, the Muse, springing out of GR where she has been dwelling in the recent past, took pity on her and after visiting the gods of literature and seeking their acceptance, decided to assist the spirally and guide her through the imposing Labyrinth.

As the Grand Kalliope-the-Muse thought that Spirally would need further assistance once she entered the traitorous mesh, she awarded her three magic weapons: an edition with footnotes; a textual companion; and an audio version.

After religiously (strike out the word religion in Joyce) looking up every footnote, Spirally, decided after a while to forget about them. Looking at the glow-worms in the floor, even if they seemed to be illuminating the way, could also mean that Spirally would knock herself against a wall. Too much attention paid to Mr Irish1, to Mr Irish37, to Mr Irish142. Too many of them. And even if the Labyrinth exists in a particular location and in a particular time and is not a product of fantasy, too much attention paid to Dublin’s streets could make Spirally miss the right corner and enter the wrong alley and never survive the Labyrinth.

The Audio was a blessing of the gods. The Labyrinth forms part of the spheres of sound and music, and its harmonies live in the vocal tradition. But Spirally’s ears are not tuned to its language. English is not phonetic and Spirally’s complete ignorance of Gaelic names meant that Spirally could not trust her own interior voice to unlock the right sounds, the rhymes. The Labyrinth has shifting walls and to find the right way one needs to listen to its inner reverberations and echoes. Listen to the Voice and you will Know. The voice also sculpts a high-relief out of flatness. Songs, and verses stand out and elevate themselves to the right register. With intonation. Baritones, mostly tenors, and eventually a shrilling soprano. Moments of welcomed and sonorous clarity.

So the Muse advised Spirally that the full passage would take one day, which really meant seven weeks – seven – the magic number for the Creation – but seven times slower. But at least it did not take her ten years like Ulysses.

The sixteen. One and six.

The Muse also gave Spirally the clue that she would have to find the way through eighteen chambers, and that those places had already been marked by the ‘resourceful hero’ of classical antiquity. The chambers are also grouped in complexes, with an Antechamber, the maze proper, and a welcoming Home.

Her protecting Muse also foretold her that there would be a son, and where there is a son, there must be a father – somewhere.

Having done Spirally her preparatory calisthenics with Homer, she finally enters, but is immediately baffled since she sees no Greek ruins. Optimistic, she hopes her training will bring its benefits later. There is however a Tower, and that must be the son that the Muse foretold. From the non-classical belfry she could envision vaguely the forthcoming intricate maze through which she would have to survive. At first there are no difficulties in the progress, but while still in the Antechamber, Spirally has her first taste of the dizziness that the maze could induce in her. And yet, she enjoys this protean ambiguity. Relaxing. She can let the flow take her along. Not difficult. The walls seem to become wind, or water, and the lack of definition does not prevent her from advancing. On the contrary, there is an indeterminate flow that pushes her along. Mesmerizing her.

Upon entering the intricate web, there he is, the father. The fatherly non-father. She notices the passages, and their names. She follows the broad one, Ecclesia, as welcoming as a church. There are many flowers along the way. How can they bloom with so little light? Could they serve as a way to find the way, like in Tom Thumb? As she proceeds, together with the flowers she encounters mushrooms with very wide and flat caps and make her think of the magic “nénuphars” in Boris Vian. Those mushrooms affect consciousness and it is no longer clear who is there and who is here.

Could I get dizzy if I ate the mushrooms? Is that what is making me see that the pathway has become a canal and that not only there is water, on which one could navigate, but also that it falls over the walls, forming aerial cataracts. Luckily there is a boat and I can continue until I reach a new shore and continue walking. On the floor I see a slab with the letters Inferno (has Dante been here?) I should not fall in there. I have already followed Dante and managed to get out at the other side of the Earth, propelled upwards (downwards to the antipodes). No need to try that again.

Suddenly a very strong waft of air blows me over, makes me lose my balance and had I not held strongly onto my weapons, it would have pushed me back to start all over again. It is so easy to miss a reference in this intricate web. Once recovered, I feel hungry and see that on the sides there are shelves with food. But it is all disgusting food, all bloody and fleshy, human flesh? If I survive, I may become a vegetarian. I also see a man peeing in Latin. Does this labyrinth have the shape of guts? What if I am in the guts of a large cetacean? Would that explain the water, and the winds?

I hear an inner voice. Keep talking to yourself and you will not dissolve. Language is your being. It will guide you in putting order in a timely fashion: Nebeneinander and Nacheinander. Remember your texts, all the literature in your life will give you food for thought and energy. It is all bound in Mnemosyne. Hamlet knew his Shakespeare. This is the advice from the GreatMuse, and she should know. She is poetry. She warns me also: But don’t drink, or that liquid will liquefy your mind.

OMG, OhMyMuse, there is another labyrinth within the labyrinth. And now what? At least I must be in the middle. I am entering an area in which Ulysses companions waxed their ears, but Kalliope-the-Muse has given me no wax. I will have to fugue it then, and grab onto the voices as they mix and interlace, straight and inverted, with false entries, but luckily my Audio will mark my way and will allow me to advance and to do so fast. Just as the Sirens of the cars open their way in emergencies.

But I am still far from safe. In danger, I will have to pretend I am not here, in case I encounter a Monster. But MyMuse said that there would not be any monsters, at least not those of Nationalisms and bigoted Creeds. Nonetheless, I must try to stick to the wall and make anyone think that there is NoBody here. My spirally self must flatten and become linear as much as possible.

The alleys from chamber to chamber are getting longer now. One needs more stamina before reaching another break and the end cannot be envisioned yet. But I get a respite because the walls are now getting smoother and of a lighter tint. Fit for a princess, or a nymph? And I can also see better now. And I am glad the quality of my vision is somewhat restored, for there are texts written on the walls. From the script I guess they have been written long long ago. They are in a language that I can decipher, but which stays foreign. The Audio contraption I carry helps bring these texts to life and I can hear their different harmonies even if I don’t recognize the tunes.

But although I think I am advancing there comes a point in which I despair at the difficulty in finding my way and invoke Kalliope-the-Muse to come and help me. There is a new mist and it is thick and discerning forms becomes more difficult. Was I given something to drink that has bewitched me? I remember the story in Apuleius, with his Julius who turned into an ass, or was it a pig? This makes me wonder, could I be bewitched and not know? How could I find out? There are no mirroring surfaces on these shadowy walls. May be I am experiencing the very process of metempsychosis.

But suddenly I see some light and I wonder whether I have traversed through the worse and since I have memory and there was an Antechamber, may be I am reaching the Postchamber and I would not be too far from the exit and from Home. Sweet home.

And it must be so, because I feel my legs firmer on the ground. So is my vision. Clear. As clear as a catechism in which precise questions elicit precise answers and there is no way around it. My soul feels a great deal lighter. It can touch truth.

Oh.

Yes, here is the exit. Just as I stop hearing the male voices a new one rises over the previous echoes. This sweet, mellifluous voice sings her feelings when Morpheus has silenced the past ones. Candied tone but I do not like her song. They are the words from a myth, the female that men fear. It certainly is a female voice but do I detect a male mind behind?

Some works are not written; they are lived. The authors write not with ink, but with breaths. Every breath that finds its way in, sucks in a piece of the world and releases it into the author’s being, letting it permeate, gauge, prod, absorb and contemplate, and packages it like a farewell gift onto the back of the breath being puffed out. And since the saga of this breath-taking game continues for a few years till the red starts blinking, we get a work that resembles distilled crystals, found a

Some works are not written; they are lived. The authors write not with ink, but with breaths. Every breath that finds its way in, sucks in a piece of the world and releases it into the author’s being, letting it permeate, gauge, prod, absorb and contemplate, and packages it like a farewell gift onto the back of the breath being puffed out. And since the saga of this breath-taking game continues for a few years till the red starts blinking, we get a work that resembles distilled crystals, found at the end of a purification process of worldly chemicals.

Fuelled by my love for Stephen , when I instinctively picked up Ulysses to read last year, I knew I was entering a labyrinth of diverse and encrypted observations, thanks to its inescapably cult reputation. I was aware I won’t understand half of it. And I felt okay to be in that space.

Ulysses, in simple terms, is an account of events of a single day in the lives of two Irish men, Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom, in Dublin. They go out of their respective homes, go to work, meet a couple of friends and acquaintances, have normal and heated conversations over food and drinks, run into each other at a library, discuss some more ideas and opinions, bond and disengage, and say goodnight before going back to their respective dens.

That’s pretty much the story, yes. But it’s Ulysses, right? And so it comes with its huge Andromeda of caveats. Within its seven words, it held seven worlds and I was, unintentionally I assure, captured into its throes for seven months. This intimidating text often tames the ambition of a reader I had heard, sometimes right in the beginning, and occasionally, mid-way, of reading it in full. And the trepidation wasn’t without reason.

Do we ever wonder about the answer we must truthfully give should someone ask the question, ‘What are you doing now?’ We are asked this atleast a dozen times in a day and mostly, we zero in on one activity, at the most, two and sometimes, none. But incidentally, the mind registers much more than one thing at a time. I am writing this review but I also heard the beep that my phone, kept next to my keyboard, made a second back. Oh, and I am also recording the movement of the person who is loitering by the door through the corner of my eye. A certain subdued chatter, emanating from the adjacent wing is also not going uncaught and so is the phone ring that is singing its soft bellow outside the corridor, in some random cabin. You see, my mind is going back and forth among all these activities and I am thinking of all of them at once, perhaps with a millisecond’s gap: who is messaging me (and what does he/she want), who is loitering around (and who is he waiting for, and what color is that shirt), what agenda is the group chattering about (and does that concern me in any way), where is that phone ringing (and why is no one answering). Mostly, the questions are inconsequential to me but not to my observations. The latter feeds on this scattered field of food and hungrily gobbles them up to keep its health in pink. These uncertainties in answers are, after all, the gaps within which, new meanings are born, every minute.

The beauty of this work lies in this very premise: intricately overlapping thoughts that run within the minds of these two men over a canvas as vast as your imagination. Joyce must have been an avid reader and an even keener learner for the references one stumbles upon, stretch geographical boundaries, political systems, societal norms and religious beliefs. While the literature flavors swell into nostrils with Blake, Milton, Shakespeare, Swift, Dante, Aristotle and Poe concocting a rich broth, the linguistic sprinkling of Latin, French, Hebrew, Sanskrit, Greek and Italian jewels encrust the prudent mayhem. Algebra is summoned in a conversation and dispatched to an opera; sandwich is anointed as the hero of an Irish mythological meal. Coffee finds intense scrutiny over a discarded table top but adultery walks away like a dignified head of state. Since thoughts defy chains, words do too and all the structural nomenclature and conventional meanings are shown the door. So, no good becomes n.g and bartender is rechristened aproned curator.

This voluminous work is made light by the collective effort of literary levers as all of them sashay in a bedazzling appearance beneath the core film: conversations, vignettes, reflections, satire, parody, lyricism, hallucinations, catechism, theatrical enactment, humor, allusions and aphorisms make hay while the sun shines and night whistles. The only mainstream narrative style I didn’t find was the epistolary route.

Reading this was like undertaking water-skiing. The balance was slippery and the grasp, minimal. But one glimpse of the blue sea and all fears folded in its hues. And that occasional zenith one suddenly finds herself at, courtesy a huge, giant leap of cognition, is worth all the chugging along through choppy waters. I felt those incredible apogees at Oxen of the Sun (Chapter 14) and Ithaca (Chapter 17). But is there a way to read it? I am not very sure. But if my experience helps in any way, I am happy to share it under the spoiler :) (view spoiler)[When I started, I had two versions of Ulysses with me; a kindle version and a paperback. I wasn’t quite sure which one I should rather read. So, I did just a little bit of support-text research. There are loads of stuff offline and online and I am mentioning here only those that I sort of feel would be useful: Ulysses Annotated is a rich book for those looking for annotations to help understand certain contexts of political, commercial and religious heat of that time. Also, the deployment of multiple languages means multiple references to translating websites/ apps, where again, this book comes handy. But it is expensive (in fact, more expensive than Ulysses!) and may be unavailable in libraries. In such a scenario, there is a free alternative which is fairly good, if not that good as the book. Put together by some lovely soul from Columbia University, this neat website has annotations for most of the chapters and these annotations have their source back in Ulysses Annotated. If podcasts or audio is your thing, you could check Frank Delany's blog for some assistance. And now with all these resources, we are back to same question - how does one read Ulysses? Well, there is no answer, really. I ended up reading both my kindle and paperback; one after another. I didn’t refer to the annotations beyond Chapter 3 and went free bird thereon. There was a certain rhythm that had seeped into my reading and I begun viewing the incessant reference as an impediment in the overall experience. I do intend to read this again someday with all the annotations in place. That should be, then, an experience of another kind! Oh another element in this: does one need to read Odyssey before venturing into Ulysses as most of us know the former to be the structural bed of the latter? I have only one answer; if you have read Odyssey, great! and if you haven’t, fantastic! Either way, you are bound to have a trip of your life :) (hide spoiler)]

Ulysses, on the surface, appears to have been written in an urgency. Upon reading it though, slowly, sipping a mug of coffee at every 20th page, I realized the urgency was a façade; all Joyce wished to do was talk. Talk because he was compelled to; compelled by the stunning sprouts of life and death around him, compelled by the inundating significance of routine and triviality engulfing him. Even while I suffered a string of failures in grasping the entirety of his revelations dripping from each page of this epic, I reveled in the overwhelming gusts of illuminating thoughts that shielded me from the maelstroms of ignorance.

And yes... Happy Birthday, Sir Joyce.

----

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I did it. I finished it. And it was everything everyone said it would be: difficult, infuriating, brilliant, insane, genius, painful, etc. You get the idea, I'm sure. I can't even rate it. How do you rate a book that left you wide-eyed with awe at the author's brilliance, yet simultaneously made you want to bring him back to life just so you could kill him?

Like Odysseus was aided by his fellow men and gods on his quest to return to Ithaca after twenty years of absence, I, who feared so much tackling Ulysses all by myself, for its complexity amounted a reputation as big and powerful as the Trojan horse, I received great help from my fellow companionship from the Odysseus to Ulysses reading group, who contributed with information, different interpretations and perspectives - which without I might have failed at finishing - and that undoubtedly pusheLike Odysseus was aided by his fellow men and gods on his quest to return to Ithaca after twenty years of absence, I, who feared so much tackling Ulysses all by myself, for its complexity amounted a reputation as big and powerful as the Trojan horse, I received great help from my fellow companionship from the Odysseus to Ulysses reading group, who contributed with information, different interpretations and perspectives - which without I might have failed at finishing - and that undoubtedly pushed me to finally get to my Penelope - or, in that case, Molly.

I'm not gonna lie though: even with all that help, concentrating and focusing at times were rather difficult tasks for me to accomplish, not that the process wasn't amusing as I found it curious to observe that while reading a character's stream of consciousness - and the writer really excelled in writing those as it was mind boggling how one thing led to another and how many times I thought to myself how it all made perfect sense and how everything had been finely connected -, but while reading Joyce's words, streams of my own were triggered, and as I started following them thought after thought, my eyes - feeling cast aside, completely ignored - complained that my brain wasn't processing what they were showing and how they were working for nothing - see, the eyes are forever jealous of the mind's eye, the one that truly possesses the great power of vision. It turned out my brain assumed that since I was reading someone else's stream of thoughts, it set out on a quest to prove that it could produce its own - and "much better!", it told me - since it had the deepest knowledge of what would really interest me. So I did find myself having to go back two or three pages - oh how my eyes protested against it! - to be able to return to Joyce's book.

As it happened when I started reading The Odyssey, I was very anxious to meet Odysseus. So, in Ulysses, after going through its first three episodes, I was all ready for some Bloom: such expectations were certainly met with some reservations. He made me very angry countless times with his tip-toeing and what seemed to be a general lack of courage to engage in confrontation (I should just say "he lacked balls", as it would definitely go well with the feel of the book and its indecent manners, as it was accused of being upon its release) - but when I came to think of it, even this anger Bloom provoked in me was a brilliant move from Joyce's part, especially once we think Leopold is a modern day Odysseus: he flees from fights as quickly as the Greek warrior ran into them, asked, solicited them. If Odysseus's soul had reincarnated into Leopold Bloom, one could make a point that it was still so tired after so many endless traps and mishaps from its past life that it lost all of its vigor, power and energy, thus turning into someone who, while faced with daily, banal difficulties, couldn't even gather one tenth of the necessary strength he had showed in the past to face his adversities.

But as Joyce wouldn't write a one-dimensional character, I did empathize with Bloom on one or two occasions, the main one being his recognizing in Stephen Dedalus his dead son Rudy, and wishing to take him under his wing and care for him as a proper father would. Although there wasn't much else I could relate to when it came to Joyce's other characters, I did recognize myself in the moments where a character is seemingly engaged in conversation with another, but what goes through his mind has nothing to do with that talk. I usually lose track of conversations I'm having because I'm inside of my head, and if my interlocutor could come up to me, just as close as it takes and peek through my eyes, he definitely would see a complete different and separate place, in another time and in another situation. This gave me a very good sense of reality in Joyce's writing and the feeling that he was really devoted in being as realistic as he could be.

He toys with language and style like no other: each episode is written differently from the previous and the next, and that advantage you normally gain in reading books that flow better once you adjust to their universe never works for Ulysses, since each episode felt like a new, different and (at times) more complicated beginning, like a new battle. His versatility seems to be unmatched. While Wandering Rocks (episode 10) is written in a fast-paced mode, composed of little vignettes following characters out and about Dublin that are intertwined here and there through small details, taking the reader to a car ride around the city, watching, while passing, every scene as if he was at home pressing fast-forward on a film playing on the tv, Circe (episode 15), is a surrealist play featuring fantasies, sexual fetishes and hallucinations: it is even structured as a play, with dialogues assigned to the characters and even stage directions. In this lengthy episode, Joyce takes us as deep as unimaginable to a level as of yet unexplored in Bloom's and Dedalus's subconscious. Penelope (episode 18, the last one) leaves it all behind and we find ourselves inside of Molly's head, witnessing her side of the story, her frustrations and expectations, all through a woman's perspective.

At the core of the novel, dusting off all parallels, correspondences and contrasts, blowing out the candles and leaving the book with just a basic moonlight to illuminate it, we find the book's raw plot. Joyce has his characters performing mundane and uninspired tasks - as most of the days on ordinary people's lives really are - which poses an interesting challenge for the writer: how to involve his reader? How to make him want more of this story? What would make a reader continue to go through a struggle reading?

It's difficult? Yes, but it's rewarding at the same time. Joyce himself has said it that he wrote in his book "so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant." Did I assimilate everything Joyce was throwing my way? No. There are many literary, political and historic references that in one way or another I was able to understand, but some (honestly? most!) I for sure overlooked, and that brings me to another important point I had in the back of my head throughout my reading experience.

There are many levels of reading and different types of readers and because of that, each Ulysses is as unique as the next person, so one should never expect to read the same book or find the same reading experience as others. The amount of references, connections, underlying motifs, web of ideas and synapses labyrinth to be found here is simply Homeric. To be able to enjoy this book and Joyce's literary achievement, to relish in his geniality, you don't need to have a checklist to know you absorbed everything or pen and paper to cross each item you understood as if it was a to-do list. It's mean to be reading, it's not homework, although the latter is deeply connected with the former, they're separate things that serve different purposes. I, for one, really enjoy understanding connections as well as possible, so I did my share of external reading as far as my curiosity took me, I did not push myself any harder than that. I prepared a joyceride where I read Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, The Odyssey and Hamlet, and even used a very helpful guide (The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses) - but those were books - minus the guide - I would already read at one point or another. It's certainly not mandatory - don't shy away from this book because it seems like a chore and too much work - to read any of those in order to conquer Ulysses and, frankly, even with as many references as I gathered, I wasn't able to take everything at once, and that's ok. I don't need to, no one needs to. Plus, it would for sure take away all the fun of a re-read.

Speaking of re-reading, I regret my decision of reading this work in Portuguese. This isn't at all a testament against Caetano W. Galindo's translation: he's an accomplished translator and one of the best and I do believe he made the best choices he could in order to make Joyce's masterpiece make sense in our language, but nonetheless some things were lost as they just wouldn't translate well. I kept an English copy for reference and it was pretty useful, but I do plan to re-read the entire book in its original form late next year.

First, about the haste. This book is a page-turner. Forget Stephen King. Joyce is the man you read in bed, furiously tongue-fingering the pages to see what seminal modernist technique he invents, masters, inverts, spins on its head like a circus freak with a whirligig in his bonce. The first five episodes set the pace perfectly, setting the reader up for the all-singing all-dancing feats of outrageous showboating that follow in the remaining thirteen chapters, each adding a few Jenga blocks to tFirst, about the haste. This book is a page-turner. Forget Stephen King. Joyce is the man you read in bed, furiously tongue-fingering the pages to see what seminal modernist technique he invents, masters, inverts, spins on its head like a circus freak with a whirligig in his bonce. The first five episodes set the pace perfectly, setting the reader up for the all-singing all-dancing feats of outrageous showboating that follow in the remaining thirteen chapters, each adding a few Jenga blocks to the superseding chapters to challenge the reader and keep her on her toes. Look, Joyce loves his reader! He’s the most unpatronising author this side of L.L. Cool J.! Joyce believes in you. He believes everyone has the capacity within them to crack his boggling Enigma code, and if that isn’t some heartwarming Sunday school moral, what is? So what if Joyce was wrong and every reader would need The New Bloomsday Book merely to scratch the surface of this amorphous, expanding superbrain of a book? Ulysses is an infinite novel. Unlike Finnegans Wake, where every attempt at some semblance of lucidity and meaning falls flat—the book a distant satellite fated to drift forever in space—Ulysses is an infinitely re-readable supernova of emotional and intellectual replenishment. Pure aesthetic pleasure. Everything that followed Ulysses expanded, plundered and rehashed Ulysses. It was the end and beginning of literature. If you like any books at all, anything post-Ulysses, you’re an ideal candidate to read Ulysses. It will break your heart, and your brain. End of....more

I wanted to start out discussing the baggage that comes with reading this book and the challenge of attempting to reach a verdict on its quality in out-of-5-star form, let alone that of trying to write a coherent response. But unfortunately, I’ve already covered that intro ground with another review. But where I succeeded in not becoming a slobbering fanboy or prickish contrarian on that occasion, I have here, much to my own surprise, failed. During the early episodes of the book I felt like II wanted to start out discussing the baggage that comes with reading this book and the challenge of attempting to reach a verdict on its quality in out-of-5-star form, let alone that of trying to write a coherent response. But unfortunately, I’ve already covered that intro ground with another review. But where I succeeded in not becoming a slobbering fanboy or prickish contrarian on that occasion, I have here, much to my own surprise, failed. During the early episodes of the book I felt like I was in 3- or 4-star territory. But then came the Shakespearean Scylla and Charybdis sequence and I started getting excited; a few chapters later I read the Cyclops episode, which caused me to become, in my wife’s astute summation, ‘giddy’. I swallowed the rest of this book in a couple of days, foregoing the finishing of The Odyssey itself, which was purportedly my preparation for Joyce’s celebrated novel. My final, overwhelmingly positive response to Ulysses was an unexpected delight after holding the impression that Joyce's works, while enjoyable, might not be for me in the same way as those of some of his contemporaries. I wasn't completely bowled over by A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in high school or by Dubliners a few weeks back. I’d even read the first 100 pages of Ulysses back in 2008 before getting sidetracked by War and Peace, the conception of a nearly year-long Russian fever that began to abate about the time I became enamored with this website. But that initial setting down of the book was likely a blessing, as fresh Shakespeare and Homer reads go a long way toward increasing a layered understanding of and gratification from this novel.

I think the primary reason that I enjoy plodding Realist epics and plotless Modernist fare is that I find human drama and psychology, realistically portrayed, to be endlessly interesting. There's no topic too boring when laid out truthfully in a prose that elevates the mundane to a realm demanding rapt attention via aesthetic alchemy. To successfully embrace and conquer the ordinary takes a special writer, but I remain easily enthralled when Proust or Woolf wax prolix on table setting rituals or when Tolstoy dallies on a hirsute upper lip. Joyce moves a step further with the whole 'make the quotidian interesting' approach and, for me, it works because it seems—to every part of my mind and experience--true. Bloom and Stephen are real people with thoughts and actions, ranging from the tedious to the generous to the despicable, that are often wincingly human. They’re presented to us in a way that’s wildly imaginative and über-detailed yet considerate of our desire to follow a well-arced human story. And this, Goodreaders, is why I read.

It’s often difficult to love a book when the main characters are unlikeable, and I know this is a problem that some have had with Ulysses. Thankfully, I found myself caring more and more for Bloom, in spite of and because of his numerous flaws, as June 16, 1904 wore on. Our hero constantly dwells on his cuckolded state and occasionally even on suicide. It's clear that he's an outsider and has to make an extra effort just to remain at the periphery of his social circle. Something about the way his mind works, how it bounces around curiously from topic to topic without dwelling too much on his misfortunes, is genuinely affecting. There's little woe-is-me with Bloom; he’s just a real-life accepter, trying to get by while nursing modest bourgeois dreams. It’s this upbeat-in-spite-of-everything attitude, tinged with a degree of compassion not found elsewhere in the book, that makes him so endearing. Given that we have access to every bit of his mental processing, the transgressions of his mind (mostly sexual and adulterous in nature) seem minimal and intrinsically human. Some serious critics claim that Joyce needed an editor, but we require all of Bloom's thoughts: the irrelevant, the irreverent, the erroneous, the silly, the serious. And with these thoughts we get excellent treatments of all the themes (and more) for which I come to fiction: death, lust, love, existence, virtue, debauchery, justice, purpose.

A day after finishing the book, I’m still struck by Joyce’s ability to render such a rounded character within a generic 24-hour period. By the end of the book we know Bloom intimately, but as with the people we know best in our own lives, there are aspects of him that remain mysterious and conflicted. Bloom’s strong points are often so well-connected to his weak ones that it can be difficult to conclude which is which. For instance, Bloom seems always to think the best of people even after they’ve behaved horribly. Following a man’s drunken and public cries of anti-Semitism, Bloom thinks that he probably meant no harm and was just riled up from the drink; he silently forgives him. But then he considers that he (Bloom) might have gone too far by declaring, in defense, that Christ was a Jew. He’s finally stood up for himself (in one of my favorite passages ever), but he ends up feeling guilty about it, a guilt that betrays a weakness in his character or, from a shifted perspective, a strength gone too far. He also treats Stephen’s ill-considered remarks and behavior charitably, blaming these on the detrimental influence of mean friends. Bloom sees himself as Stephen's personal 'catcher in the rye', and while he’s impotent to prevent the violence visited up young Dedalus late in the story, he does manage to salvage his money and personal effects. He goes beyond this service, however, by paying off Stephen’s brothel debt and even returning his money with interest, becoming his Good Samaritan or, to stick with The Odyssey, his Eumaeus—the loyal swineherd who helps a travel-battered Odysseus upon his long awaited return to Ithaca.

Regarding this story’s relationship with The Odyssey, one of the most obvious points of dissonance between the two is with the notion of heroism. In Homer’s epic, we have the quintessential manly-man whose fighting skills and wit are second to none, and who ultimately defeats his enemies via large-scale slaughter. In Ulysses, we have the effeminate, cuckolded social outsider who uses his curious and well-meaning perspective to defeat his enemies with magnanimity. And Joyce doesn’t just invert Homer's idea of a hero, but also Shakespeare's representation of a cuckolded husband. In Shakespeare’s world, the cuckold is someone to be laughed at, the butt of all jokes, and the embarrassment and even the responsibility of the man who couldn't control his wife. Joyce makes cuckolding appear tragic while not overstating its importance, at one point listing dozens of deeds that are worse, including everything from mayhem and contempt of court to criminal assault and manslaughter. The imminent cuckolding pops up in nearly every episode (maybe all of them), hounding and haunting Bloom. There’s no wool over his eyes. He knows and, in a way, allows the act to happen due to his own perceived powerlessness over the situation. In a later episode, I thought that side character Gerty (a stand in for The Odyssey’s Nausicaa) had spied out a sad-looking Stephen Dedalus on the beach, but a few pages later we find out this man with the despondent countenance is actually Bloom. When I realized that Gerty’s pity wasn’t in response to the ennui of an intellectually-tortured dilettante but to a man who was currently experiencing an intimate betrayal, the episode reached a peak of poignancy. And then in true Joycean fashion, he moves right past this moment to one of lust and masturbation, complete with a climax joined by beach fireworks that’s reminiscent of the love scene between Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief.

Where Bloom may get into trouble with readers (and Joyce with censors) is with his lustful, objectifying, and lecherous thoughts. And it’s this frank sexual honesty that’s still surprising and blush-inducing 80 years later. Bloom's specific lustings and yearnings aren’t universal to the male experience, but they are recognizably human in their sui generis imagining. The very specificity of his desire, at times quite blunt and offensive, is certainly what led to the charges of vulgarity and indecency. For it has been common throughout history to treat sexual proclivities not shared by oneself as strange, creepy, and even dangerous. So Bloom is, as he’s referred to in the hallucinatory Circe episode, ‘No Man and Everyman’, at once ordinary and extraordinary. Exhibiting Bloom’s fetishes so completely is what pushes this novel into a realm of reality that was at the time unexplored, and perhaps not yet bested in the fiction that’s followed.

Almost as if he sensed that the reader may be building up too much sympathy for Bloom in spite of his occasional creepiness, Joyce decided to bring him down a few notches after his side of the story is finished. We’re reminded that we’ve only been getting half of the picture with his marriage and that two genuine experiences do not always add up to the same interpretation of reality. Once we get to hear Molly’s voice, we find that in certain instances the two of them are simply misinformed about the actions and thoughts of the other. Communication has been damaged, perhaps irreparably. In other cases we get the fullest realization of one of the primary themes in the book: parallax, an astronomic concept that Joyce uses metaphorically throughout the novel. One of the great misfortunes or, depending on the circumstances, boons of humanity is that because we see certain events and ideas from disparate locations with respect to context, intellect, gender, nationality, etc., we perceive these things differently, despite the fact that in reality, outside the world of perception, they are the same. Thus, Bloom and Molly feel that the other is to blame for many of the problems—recognized independently from distinct perspectives—in their marriage. Joyce also employs the concept of parallax stylistically, utilizing different prose formats for each episode and forcing us to confront the ways in which a writer’s stylistic and aesthetic sensibilities influence the way we perceive a narrative and react to it emotionally.

So anyway, here we are. Living our lives; reading our books. Experiencing reality through the ineluctable modality of the visible. Does this book have anything to say about the big questions of life and how to derive some meaning from this giant mess? Yes, yes it does. The world of Ulysses revolves around a single Word, a concept that's refracted into many meanings and contexts. Each of the three main characters—Bloom/Odysseus, Stephen/Telemachus, and Molly/Penelope—ultimately recognizes its power, its necessity as the grounding of their lives. But only one of them has the bravery to weather charges of sentimentality and soft-heartedness, to utter the Word in the face of cruel mocking; that's our hero, that ‘conscious reactor against the void incertitude,’ Leopold Bloom. Here on Goodreads I haven’t his courage, and I will name it along with Stephen as ‘the word known to all men.’...more

(Geneva, late 2012. Plainpalais market, a riotous display of phallic vegetables, ill-smelling cheese and trash literature. THE REVIEWER and his GIRLFRIEND walk through the stalls hand in hand. Polyglot conversations around them.)

THE REVIEWER: Now here's a significant quote."My methods are new and are causing surpriseTo make the blind see I throw dust in their eyes."

STANISLAW LEM: Mogę to rozwinąć.MICHAEL KANDEL: I can give you more details on that.

THE REVIEWER: Now here's a significant quote."My methods are new and are causing surpriseTo make the blind see I throw dust in their eyes."

STANISLAW LEM: Mogę to rozwinąć.MICHAEL KANDEL: I can give you more details on that.

SWEDISH SHOPPER: Hej! Jag kommer ifrån Bollestad.

THE REVIEWER: And this one. "The sense of beauty leads us astray." It's like Proust, but the exact opposite. Maximally implicit rather than maximally explicit.

AMERICAN SHOPPER: I'm from Biloxi.

THE REVIEWER: A projective space? A Riemann sphere? U.P.: up. Or down, if you prefer. It comes to the same thing.

(THE GIRLFRIEND gives him a irritated look)

THE REVIEWER: [Smugly] Don't get your knickors in a twistor.

[They have reached a bookstall full of lurid French paperbacks. THE GIRLFRIEND, ignoring him, starts going through them]

THE GIRLFRIEND: Have you read this one? Les Sirènes de l'Autoroute.

THE REVIEWER: Très douce.

THE GIRLFRIEND: Les Sacrifiés du Soleil?

THE REVIEWER: Amazingly, appallingly alliterative!

THE GIRLFRIEND: La Plage aux Nymphes?

THE REVIEWER: Nausicating.

GIRLFRIEND: [Giving up in disgust] You're such a smartarse. What were you talking about? Cosmology again?

ALBERT EINSTEIN: Take one curvature tensor, contract, subtract a scalar, et voilà! Instant universe. On that mystery and not on the Madonna which the cunning Italian intellect flung to the mob of Europe the Church is founded and founded irremovably because founded, like the world, macro- and microcosm, upon the void. Ex nihilo nihil fit. Mais non.

THE GIRLFRIEND: Speak English, you old fart.

[EINSTEIN shrugs and calls over LAWRENCE KRAUSS and RICHARD DAWKINS to join him. They sing together in uncertain harmony]

ALBERT EINSTEIN: Space is curved.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: But it's flat.

RICHARD DAWKINS: Well, that's put an end to that.

THE REVIEWER: I'm not sure I follow---

RICHARD DAWKINS: [Irritated] There is no God. Do I have to explain everything?

[EINSTEIN, KRAUSS and DAWKINS all disappear again. THE REVIEWER and his GIRLFRIEND proceed towards the Route de Carouge. A TRAM passes, on its side a Christmas-themed wine poster whose title is "La belle houx"]

THE TRAM: Brhm brhm brhm brhm-hm-hm. Brhm.

STEPHEN POTTER: [Holding wine-glass] Too many tramlines.

THE REVIEWER: A little bit cornery round the edges.

STEPHEN POTTER: Well ployed sir!

[He raises his glass in salutation to THE REVIEWER, who follows his GIRLFRIEND across the Route de Carouge. CHARLES DARWIN steps out of the Rue De-Candolle to meet them]

CHARLES DARWIN: There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers.

THE REVIEWER: [Blankly] What's evolution got to do with it?

CHARLES DARWIN: Oh, I don't know. Survival of the fittest or something. I mean, it's survived? You can't deny that? And you wouldn't expect it to if it were as crazy as it looks?

THE REVIEWER: I suppose not. But---

CHARLES DARWIN: Not only that, it's reproduced. Any number of people have copied it.

THE GIRLFRIEND: Look, just because---

CHARLES DARWIN: [Cutting her off] Well then. I rest my case.

THE REVIEWER: [To his GIRLFRIEND] So what is the fascination of the book? What revelation does it promise us?

[Enter KRISTEN STEWART, wearing a semi-transparent gown]

THE GIRLFRIEND: You can't see as much as you think.

THE REVIEWER: The opacity only makes it more interesting. Trust me.

KRISTEN STEWART: Art thou real, my ideal? it was called, and after that there was something about twilight, will thou ever? That's so inspiring, isn't it?

THE REVIEWER: [who cannot take his eyes off her] May I write a poem to your breasts? [With an insinuating leer] They say I'm good at that.

ROBERT PATTINSON: [Shoving in ahead of him] I was first.

THE GIRLFRIEND: Well fuck me dead.

ROBERT PATTINSON: NecrophiliaI've heard of sillierThe question isWont ya or will ya.

[He goes down on one knee]

KRISTEN STEWART: I will. Voglio. However you pronounce it.

THE REVIEWER: But she'll be hard. Impenetrable. Like marble. Where's the pleasure of the text?

ROBERT PATTINSON: It's not hard when you're married. You need to make a commitment.

*this review has a lot of swearing in it and for that I apologize. drinking requires apologies*

I have about thirty pages, front and back, of notes on this book, I swear. My intentions for the review were epic in proportion: multiple Ian-Graye style headings, a dissertation level of analysis, and a wealth of puns scattered throughout.

But of course, books leave their impact in complex and frustrating ways and initially, any semblance of a review was far too intimidating.On Not Reviewing this Book

*this review has a lot of swearing in it and for that I apologize. drinking requires apologies*

I have about thirty pages, front and back, of notes on this book, I swear. My intentions for the review were epic in proportion: multiple Ian-Graye style headings, a dissertation level of analysis, and a wealth of puns scattered throughout.

But of course, books leave their impact in complex and frustrating ways and initially, any semblance of a review was far too intimidating. Then, there arose other reasons—that are personal and embarrassing—as to why I did not even want to look at the damn thing ever again. Certain emotions cling and others fade away and I feel quite fortunate for the ones that have departed and the ones that have yet to leave. I look back on this book with warm nostalgia and a longing for the past.

So, perhaps I can write about this book now. Perhaps.

On Reviewing this Book: a Personal Anecdote

I read this over the summer of 2012, reading about 100 pages a week. When I fawn over my hardcover copy and admire the eye-patched picture of Joyce, memories spring up, automatically. I reminisce about the swimming pool my friend manages and my free-access to it summer-long. The months of June and July were probably the hottest I’ve ever experienced in Colorado. So in between the days I worked—outside, wedding services, black clothes, 13 hour shifts—I would waste an entire day at the pool, reading Ulysses and jumping into the cool, refreshing water every thirty minutes. This is life, I tell you. Beautiful warmth, great literature, and water slides.

But most of all, at the end of each week, I got to meet with the most beautiful girl I’d ever met at a coffee shop and talk about the book. The first day we met to read the book was June 16th, 2012. Every conversation hit the “standing-up and nearly screaming” type of excitement that only I achieve when talking about the things I love the most. Only with literature have I experienced that epiphanic, everything fits together type of religious sensation. Ulysses delivered that in droves. Nearly every page is its own work of art that deserves to be read and cherished. My Joyceful friend knew a staggering amount about the Bible and Greek Myths, so the over-abundance of references that I missed, she would point out and the over-abundance of theories that I spun, worked in tandem with information we gathered. Imagine a 20 year old, slightly pretentious-looking college student, leaping out of his chair, exclaiming his excitement for all the coffee house patrons to hear and imagine the blonde-hair girl opposite, laughing and smiling at the response.

Joyce Has So Much Fucking Swagger, Jay-Z Ain’t Got Shit on Him

I remember reading a line in Ulysses that proclaims that Ireland doesn’t have its masterpiece yet. . . yet! The book went airborne and crashed against my wall. That pretentious and self-satisfied fuck! I had never been so pissed at an author for intruding on the text. I finally got over myself and continued reading. It took maybe three pages of Siren’s section to realize that yes, Joyce totally earns that intrusion about masterpieces. The writing is so frequently virtuosic and dazzling and well-written that it’s hard to not to think about how much of a genius Joyce was and wonder how the hell he ever got so good at using the english language.

He does just about every imaginable thing a person could do to the language while still managing to make you laugh/cry/scream in joy.

Empiricism

I had, at the time, what I thought to be some brilliant reading of the whole book and how Joyce incorporates sense experience in his writing to create a continuous stream-of-consciousness that is always correcting itself and rewriting itself, as the act of conscious experience is an act of writing and rewriting narratives to make sense of the outer world, an idea that I copped from Daniel Dennett’s Consciousness Explained who copped it from Derrida or something. There are jaw-dropping scenes that incorporate the characters’ sensual experiences, their thoughts about that experience and the memories that constantly inform their interpretations of those original experiences all in a single moment. The third chapter of the book constitutes what I deem to be (actually my literature teacher deemed it so but I will just use it to sound smart) one of the few true stream-of-conscious-thought pieces of writing.

Loves loves to fucking love love

What a classic line. And bully for Joyce for pouring such sentimentality into his masterpiece of high-brow literature. Did you know there’s essentially a romance novella written in the middle of this book? I bet you didn’t know that. And goddamn if it isn’t better than any romance novel I’ve read. Joyce probably made a list of things that he wanted to “take care of” as far as writing the book was concerned. And over the seven years (?) it took him to write the book, I’m sure Joyce ticked off several items off the list, and with each, he chuckled to himself and went back to fucking shit up with his typewriter.

The Nightmare of History

Speaking of classic lines. I thought a lot of about the history being a nightmare. You know, towards the end, Joyce described Bloom and Stephen as somnambulists (sleepwalkers) and my mind exploded—i.e. the whole book was the nightmare the characters were trying to wake up from.

Then I thought about how much Joyce references works of other literature (especially Shakespeare, holy shit there’s a lot of shakespeare in this thing). And Stephen struggles to be a writer because he can’t stop thinking about how his work resembles works from the past, from history. And my mind exploded.I think about how history is a nightmare, yet the ending, the beautiful, bittersweet ending, jumps into the past. Joyce embraces the past at the end, but not after making the present moment so beautiful.

The Present, The Everyday, The Epiphany

My modern short story teacher once described narratives with “epiphanic realizations” as Joycean. I think I know why. Since history is what haunts Joyce’s novel, he tries to show the present moment for all the beauty that it is. This is why the book takes place over one day. He is trying to show how much beauty and meaning is packed into the everyday mundane. People drink at pubs, people go to funerals, people flirt with other people. People give birth. Don’t even get me started on the Oxen of the Sun aka “the greatest thing done with the english language, it’s fucking demonstrable, it is”. Okay, here’s the deal. There’s a girl giving birth upstairs, so Joyce decides to give birth to the english language. He writes in Angelo fucking Saxon and then works his way up through all the evolutions of the language until he returns to modern day vernacular. No one had ever even gotten close to doing that kind of ventriloquistic madness and no one ever will. David Mitchell is a pussy.

Okay I’m sorry about the D. Mitch comment. That was messed up. I still love him.

Anyway, nearly everything in the novel is connected by this idea, that the present moment ought to be celebrated. It gives justification for all the literary tricks within. All the literary tricks are meant to make the mundane, beautiful. Is that Bloom walking into a bar? Or is it a retelling of Odysseus sailing past the sirens, being pulled in by their beautiful song (transposed *(pun fucking intended)* in Joyce’s poetic prose). The entire section is first of all, really beautiful and second of all, filled with music imagery.

Then there’s this blind character who keeps “tap tap tapping” around as we, the reader, “tap tap tap” around the prose to get our bearings, trying out sounds in order to orient ourselves in a setting, reinterpreting the sense data to create narrative and Joyce uses the sounds of music to convey this in order to show how a blind person creates a narrative out of life with sound. And now we’ve gone full circle, connecting back to one of my first points.

Boom bitch!

James Joyce is the Original Based God and Lil ‘b is just his Lowly Follower

I won’t even pretend to make any puns in this review. I would just fail under the punning prowess that is the Joyceman.

There’s a part where Bloom orders a sandwich and he thinks about how the ham sandwich ended up on his plate with the ingredients “bred and mustered there”. Obviously to talk about the deplorable state of factory farming. Because, obviously Joyce was a vegetarian and animal-rights activist. Only in my deluded readings of his book probably.

A Failed Love Poem

The fair, misses that I met with was named Erin Greenhalgh. I only say this because flip to page 123 and you’ll understand.

Erin Green(halgh), gem of the silver sea,so inadequate to depict you as merely pretty—you leave far behind the likes of Remedios the beauty—confounding my inane iambs and cleverly-metered trochee.Trying to capture the experience of your being with me,renders all dewey-eyed ideals into weakening words in atrophy.Such is the attempt to capture every single quiddityof the deft, green beauty in the gem of the sea.Still as I navigate thru currents and against the breezeI succumb to the inevitable tide, ineluctable in its emotional pleas.Waves crashing within, any any sight, they screamin a sense, blinding all thoughts, its power must be.So to pen down these things, only things it relieves,still remains the wonderment inherent in thee.Unable to continue in second-person flattery,I’ll retreat back to third, with what I remember, a story.Once intoned in her words so suffused in poetry,that in the search for meaning, language is a commodity.But I hope this is not any purchase, in dollar or penny,of the uncommodifiable desires of human feelings, plenty.So to the face of a thousand ships, here’re my words, not many:I worry about the eventual demise of our proximity.Winding towards its end, our summer Odyssey,on the cusp of being too trite and not cliché hopefully!Never let it die; our interactions are so lovelyand let’s keep this skiff abreast the waves chatting literature and life over coffee.

Yes, yes, we've all heard the hype and sniping. Ulysses is one of the greatest books ever written, it is a masturbatory piece of tripe, it is a triumph of modernism and the culmination of Irish literature, it's an unintelligible prank on literature professors, and so on. You can read the other reviews here or volumes of critical analysis elsewhere.

So this is the very first time I have read Ulysses to its completion. I tried once as a pockmarked adolescent and quit in the chapter composed almostYes, yes, we've all heard the hype and sniping. Ulysses is one of the greatest books ever written, it is a masturbatory piece of tripe, it is a triumph of modernism and the culmination of Irish literature, it's an unintelligible prank on literature professors, and so on. You can read the other reviews here or volumes of critical analysis elsewhere.

So this is the very first time I have read Ulysses to its completion. I tried once as a pockmarked adolescent and quit in the chapter composed almost entirely of sound effects (The Sirens). Two thousand books and years later, I think I understood parts of it. I used very little in the way of previous annotations, with the exception of looking up strange new words on Google and using a map of Dublin.

With only a little effort, we can discern such things as a 'plot', 'main character', and 'themes'. Ulysses follows the lives of two men - the morose contemplative Stephen Daedalus, and the kidney-eater Leopold Bloom, and their lives in the city of Dublin on June 16, 1904.

The book is infamous for its personal detail and experiments with style, and there are new methods in almost every chapter. Joyce writes sections in the style of a newspaper, in musical motifs, and in Chapter 14, in almost every literary style used in the British Isles since the pre-Roman era.

Aside from this technical virtuosity, there are some astounding experiments in human psychology, written in a stream-of-consciousness style, as seen most famously in Daedalus' internal monologue in Chapter 3 and Molly Bloom's titanic rambling sentences in the final chapter. In Chapter 10, 'Wandering Rocks', we see the divergent streams of multiple characters in the city itself, and Joyce skips from person to person, demonstrating their vast differences as part of a broader whole.

But aside from these broad literary themes, what is the book about? Well, almost everything that Joyce could fit in there. He talks about food, music, science, theology, history, mythology, contemporary politics. But it is also about human details. It is about sex and masturbation and taking big shits and lots of other filthy things which previously had not been discussed in novels. (Remember the title of Buck Mulligan's play, "Every Man His Own Wife".)

Aside from such physical concerns, there is a great deal of emotion and melancholy here. Memories of a lost past, and a present in turmoil. Joyce wrote the book in a span of seven years during one of the worst wars in human history, (Trieste-Zürich-Paris 1914-1921), but never saw his beloved Dublin in them. Bloom weeps bitterness over his dead son. Perhaps Joyce wrote part of this book as forlorn praise to a home that he could no longer visit. It is about a place that he loved, and within it he found eternity....more

I finished Ulysses! It took Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay 7 weeks to climb to the top of Mt. Everest. It took me 5 weeks to conquer Mt. Ulysses. After I finished, I threw the book on the table, ran out the door, down Kelly Drive, through the art museum circle, ran up the stairs, started punching at the air and raised my fists in victory!! And the world reJoyced!

I finished Ulysses! It took Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay 7 weeks to climb to the top of Mt. Everest. It took me 5 weeks to conquer Mt. Ulysses. After I finished, I threw the book on the table, ran out the door, down Kelly Drive, through the art museum circle, ran up the stairs, started punching at the air and raised my fists in victory!! And the world reJoyced!

*******To prepare for this journey, I consulted many on-line resources that provided the fundamentals I would need for comprehending this beast of a novel. A friend loaned me his copy of the erudite Heffernan lectures from the “great courses” series. I procured a reading buddy to accompany me on the expedition, acquired a copy of the novel, got lots of rest and had a good, hearty meal, then began my trek.

We got off to a quick start. Weather was lovely, supplies plentiful, and the Irishman we brought along for the journey was amusing.Halfway through the expedition, I began to tire. My reading partner could wait for me no longer, so he took off for the summit alone, leaving me with the onus of finding the wherewithal to finish this book on my own.

That fucking Irishman started getting on my nerves and my enthusiasm wavered. Yet I continued climbing. At times I thought I was losing my mind. At other times I marveled at how eloquently he spoke about such tasteless things as taking a crap, masturbating in public, having a pissing contest:

“The trajectories of their, first sequent, then simultaneous, urinations were dissimilar: Bloom’s longer, less irruent (is that even a word?), in the incomplete form of the bifurcated penultimate alphabetical letter who in his ultimate year at High School (1880) had been capable of attaining the point of greatest altitude against the whole concurrent strength of the institution, 210 scholars: Stephen’s higher, more sibilant, who in the ultimate hours of the previous day had augmented by diuretic consumption an insistent vesical pressure.”

Ya don’t say.

Somehow I found the resolve to push through all of the nonsense and concentrate on what it is that makes this book a classic: brilliant writing. There is no doubt that James Joyce was a master of his craft. Jimmy, my man. And believe it or not, I’m actually looking forward to reading the rest of his oeuvre (well, minus Finnegan’s Wake. Fuuuuck that).

Warning: Some alcoholic substances were consumed by the author of this review. The rest, though regrettably significant in quantity, were consumed by the keyboard of his thirsty desktop computer, which wishes to state on its own behalf and in its own defence that none of the opinions expressed in this review reflect its opinions or state of mind at the time.

Things I'm Prepared to Swear About

I do solemnly swear that I bought this book today, 6 March, 2011.It only cost $16, which was a bargain.It has a different cover, but that's cool, I hope.It's based on the 1960 translation from the English.It's 933 pages long, but the font size is much bigger than I feared, so I'm OK with that.I think of it as value for money in this era when the counter culture has been superseded by the over-the-counter culture (or should that be the uber-counter culture for us Buffy fans?).

Upside Down and Inverted

I haven't been able to find any inverted commas in my version.This might mean that this book is all action and no dialogue.Or it might mean that they hadn't invented inverted commas in the days of Ulysses.Either that or they were all uninverted then.

The March of a Thousand Wikipedes

I am thinking of writing all of the headings from the Wikipedia article on Ulysses at the beginning of each chapter (in pencil, in case someone edits them while I'm reading the book), because I'm sure it will aid comprehension.

My Mother, a Clear Mind and Anthony Burgess

My mother always said that a clear mind aids comprehension.However, I'm not prepared to stop drinking for as long as it takes me to read the "Greatest Novel of the Century" (Anthony Burgess, Observer).I don't know who Anthony Burgess is (I haven't checked his WP article, if he's got one).However, this dude needs to seriously update his opinion.Everybody knows that Ulysses was written last century, der (I've just realised I don't know how to spell "der". If only I could txt in my revu, sir).

Another Observation by a Different Observer

You can bet that my review won't just say I'm an Observer.I'm going to proudly proclaim that I am the 12,975th most popular Good Reads reviewer of the first week of March, 2011 (how contemporary can you get)?

Should I Really Be Committed?

Well, that's my review of the front and back cover and an arbitrarily chosen page in the middle (unfortunately, for a supposedly dirty book, it didn't fall open on any particular page).I suppose I should commit to reading it now.I must admit that, despite the font size, I still find this task daunting.Everybody I know says that reading Ulysses requires a lifetime of commitment.I don't think I'm ready for a lifetime of commitment.I'm a male, for dog's sake.

Conspicuous Impressivism

However, I do promise to leave it somewhere conspicuous, where impressionable people (the "impressionista") can see it and be suitably impressionistic.If they say, "Shit, have you read Ulysses?", I'll be honest and say, "Only enough to write a 600 word review for an online journal of opinion read by 13,000 highly opinionated professional opinionists, der".I don't know how many words I've actually written. I can't work out how to use Word Count on Good Reads. But who's counting, we're all readers here!

A Show of Great Promise

So what should I promise?I do solemnly and sincerely swear a lot, but not idly, and in order not to be deemed idol, I promise to read one chapter by the end of this financial year.In fact, I'm feeling kinda sporty now.

III, II, I, Blast Off

Hang on, what's this bit at the beginning with the strange page numbering? lxxv, lxxvi? Roman numerals. I'll skip that. There's a reason why Latin is a dead language.If their words are all cactus, why should their numbers count?Show me the greatest novel of the last century and I'll show you a book that's English. Now, "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan..."Gees, I'm into it already.

1. I am good for only one "major" read in a year. I had set out wanting to read this and Proust this year. Alas, I was only able to make it through Ulysses.

2. It's okay to have another along to help you out the first time through. In this case, it was Blamire's The New Bloomsday Book.

3. I realize that Joyce was, indeed, a literary genius. I can see why some writers would quit writing after reading Ulysses, as he is a master of the written wWhat I've discovered about myself from reading Ulysses:

1. I am good for only one "major" read in a year. I had set out wanting to read this and Proust this year. Alas, I was only able to make it through Ulysses.

2. It's okay to have another along to help you out the first time through. In this case, it was Blamire's The New Bloomsday Book.

3. I realize that Joyce was, indeed, a literary genius. I can see why some writers would quit writing after reading Ulysses, as he is a master of the written word. His flitting from voice to voice and style to style without losing the narrative is proof enough. That said, there are moments of tedium, some of them many pages long, that rival and exceed even the great Moby Dick for sheer boredom. When he's on, he's on, when he's off, he's drop-dead boring . . . and no academic pretense that you want to learn something about whaling (which you really don't, let's face it) will save you this time.

4. I realize that Joyce plays domestic angst in an excruciatingly understated way. He creates excellent tension by what he does not say, as much as by what he does say.

5. The funeral/underworld scene is an astounding piece of work. I felt sadness, pity, annoyance, and laughed aloud, all at once. Such a mixing bowl of emotions in that section. My innards are all tumbled around after that, like I don't know which way is, emotionally speaking, up.

6. Anyone who coins the acronym "K.M.R.I.A" deserves a statue. Or did he coin the term? Either way, he inspired The Pogues to use it in a song, which deserves a statue in its own way.

7. Jest on. Know thyself. may be all you need to know about Joyce and the notion of fiction as autobiography.

8. I love the "sirens" section, with its sing-song rich voice, which feels like it was written in the shadow of Finnegan's Wake. It's one of my favorite places to be a brain.

9. I need to read all of Finnegan's Wake.

10. "-Tis a custom more honored in the breach than in the observance." may be the most clever pun I've ever heard. Ever.

11. I love the sections where Joyce is seemingly channeling Lovecraft, then Dunsany, then Wavy Gravy.

12. The sentence: "The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit." may be one of my favorite sentences of all time.

When I was in my late teens I purchased a copy of Ulysses on the advice of some acquaintance (now forgotten) who assured me that it was the pinnacle of literary achievement; that it was the greatest novel ever written. For many years that copy has languished on the shelf, its pages gradually yellowing between pristine covers and intact spine. Occasionally, when browsing the shelves I would retrieve it and examine the picture on the cover - an incredibly drab monochrome image of some bridges reflWhen I was in my late teens I purchased a copy of Ulysses on the advice of some acquaintance (now forgotten) who assured me that it was the pinnacle of literary achievement; that it was the greatest novel ever written. For many years that copy has languished on the shelf, its pages gradually yellowing between pristine covers and intact spine. Occasionally, when browsing the shelves I would retrieve it and examine the picture on the cover - an incredibly drab monochrome image of some bridges reflected over a river (Dublin, presumably) - and from this I would attempt to deduce what the novel might be about. The picture evokes old world stagnation, depression and despair, without a hint of romanticism. I imagined grim faces of men enduring hard times, the bitter stink of stale beer in old pubs, a depressing general decay and death. I read random snippets of text - I recall there was mention of a funeral, but otherwise it was mostly confusing passages from which nothing concrete could be gleaned. In all I could not conceive how such a book could sustain itself for over nine hundred pages, let alone stand as the pinnacle of anything. And so each time the book would be returned to the shelf unread. I began to doubt the literary credentials of my acquaintance.

But over the years this reputation has only been further reinforced. I learned more about the book - its central theme, its structure, and its author. Eventually, I began to avoid it no longer from indifference but from intimidation. Could I even read and understand such a great and difficult work? In 2015 I read both Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and did not love either - I realised later that I had made the mistake of reading them too soon (one needs exposure and experience to develop appreciation). So I decided to wait another year before reading Ulysses. I'm glad I did.

I won't pretend that I understood even a significant percentage of all the subtle references and stylistic allusions, or that Ulysses was perfectly enthralling all the way through, but it does undoubtedly deserve the high position it enjoys in the literary pantheon. Joyce has taken the concept of the novel, shattered it and recomposed it in eighteen different ways. Is it incredibly pretentious? Yes! Is it sometimes long winded, or boring? Yes! Does it always work, or even make sense? No! But it is at all times thoroughly a work of genius, of limitless ambition, written by someone with supreme ability and complete control over his vision. Its influence has been immense - I can see the precursors of Faulkner, McCarthy, Beckett, Eliot, even Nabokov, refracted in its prism.

What is striking about Ulysses is that both because of - and despite - its fragmented nature, it manages to depict characters who are at once transcendent, legendary, but also personal, fragile, and yet who remain entirely coherent. These are characters who are deeply human, and whose ugly natures both in body and mind are on full display. Joyce doesn't shy away from anything - I was aware that the book had been banned on grounds of profanity, but I was still surprised that the book was so unabashedly dirty, and it was not simply a prudish overreaction (as an example, there is, hilariously, a character called Cunty Kate!) Having said that, I am amused by the thought of kids toiling through Ulysses in search of the occasional lewd passage (teenage boys today will never understand the the struggle of previous generations). Personally, I would be quite happy if random obscenities were retrospectively inserted into all kinds of books, if it would help to get people reading literature again.

Unfortunately, the fact that people are no longer reading literature makes it harder for a novel like Ulysses to endure. The political concerns of 1904 have faded, and the cultural link with classical Western culture has been all but completely severed in the modern world. Ulysses draws references from mythical Greece, through ancient Rome, and various English literary traditions. It contains passages in at least six languages. It is crammed with obscure meanings, and all these connections are impossible for a modern reader to appreciate in any deep or meaningful way (even a guide which identifies them cannot replace a reading of the source material). And so the barrier to entry for Ulysses will continue to rise. My advice though, to someone who appreciates great literature but is intimidated by all of this - just dive in, there is more than enough brilliance here to make it worthwhile....more

That’s it. I love Joyce. I’ve said it I can’t take it back. Ulysses is great. Like, really great. And its difficulty it so ridiculously overhyped that it makes me want to stab something. I enjoyed this so much I read it in two sittings, both in less than 48 hours. God. It’s just so good. Joyce is a master and you all should read him. Now.

James Joyce, Irish novelist, noted for his experimental use of language in such works as Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939). Joyce's technical innovations in the art of the novel include an extensive use of interior monologue; he used a complex network of symbolic parallels drawn from the mythology, history, and literature, and created a unique language of invented words, puns, and allusionsJames Joyce, Irish novelist, noted for his experimental use of language in such works as Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939). Joyce's technical innovations in the art of the novel include an extensive use of interior monologue; he used a complex network of symbolic parallels drawn from the mythology, history, and literature, and created a unique language of invented words, puns, and allusions.

James Joyce was born in Dublin, on February 2, 1882, as the son of John Stanislaus Joyce, an impoverished gentleman, who had failed in a distillery business and tried all kinds of professions, including politics and tax collecting. Joyce's mother, Mary Jane Murray, was ten years younger than her husband. She was an accomplished pianist, whose life was dominated by the Roman Catholic Church. In spite of their poverty, the family struggled to maintain a solid middle-class facade.

From the age of six Joyce, was educated by Jesuits at Clongowes Wood College, at Clane, and then at Belvedere College in Dublin (1893-97). In 1898 he entered the University College, Dublin. Joyce's first publication was an essay on Ibsen's play When We Dead Awaken. It appeared in the Fortnightly Review in 1900. At this time he also began writing lyric poems.

After graduation in 1902 the twenty-year-old Joyce went to Paris, where he worked as a journalist, teacher and in other occupations under difficult financial conditions. He spent a year in France, returning when a telegram arrived saying his mother was dying. Not long after her death, Joyce was traveling again. He left Dublin in 1904 with Nora Barnacle, a chambermaid who he married in 1931.

Joyce published Dubliners in 1914, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in 1916, a play Exiles in 1918 and Ulysses in 1922. In 1907 Joyce had published a collection of poems, Chamber Music.

At the outset of the First World War, Joyce moved with his family to Zürich. In Zürich Joyce started to develop the early chapters of Ulysses, which was first published in France because of censorship troubles in the Great Britain and the United States, where the book became legally available only in 1933. In March 1923 Joyce started in Paris his second major work, Finnegans Wake, suffering at the same time chronic eye troubles caused by glaucoma. The first segment of the novel appeared in Ford Madox Ford's transatlantic review in April 1924, as part of what Joyce called Work in Progress. The final version was published in 1939.

Some critics considered the work a masterpiece, though many readers found it incomprehensible. After the fall of France in WWII, Joyce returned to Zürich, where he died on January 13, 1941, still disappointed with the reception of Finnegans Wake....more